Software supply chain
tools used to make software
A software supply chain is the components, libraries, tools, and processes used to develop, build, and publish a software artifact. This collection of dependencies is called a software supply chain, by analogy with supply chains of physical goods required for manufacturing. Companies with products that rely on complex software supply chains may implement strategies for supply chain risk management to try to improve supply chain security.
A software bill of materials (SBOM) declares the inventory of components used to build a software artifact, including any open source and proprietary software components. It is the software analogue to the traditional manufacturing bill of materials (BOM), which is used as part of supply chain management. SBOMs are a strategy for improving transparency in the software supply chain.
Background
Most software products include third-party libraries and components, including proprietary software and open-source code libraries, which typically depend on a variety of upstream libraries and components in turn. According to an analysis by Synopsys in 2024, 96% of the commercial codebases they analyzed contained open-source software, and a Linux Foundation study in 2022 reported that 70–90% of a typical codebase consisted of open-source components. Along with the software libraries themselves, software supply chains may include package managers (such as PyPI and npm), tools (such as integrated development environments and static analyzers), and software as a service (such as GitHub and AI-assisted software development products).
The Heartbleed and Shellshock vulnerabilities in commonly-used software packages, discovered by security researchers and publicly disclosed in 2014, were examples of the need for vulnerability management approaches that include software composition analysis.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Software supply chain” as tools used to make software. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as tools used to make software. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25051452. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2022 and 2014.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Software supply chain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.