Introduction to the Minitrack Software Sustainability: Strategies for Long-Lasting and Usable Software

In an era where software plays a pivotal role in shaping technology landscapes, ensuring usabile, long-lasting and reproducible software is one that spans various domains of science and significant investment of research funding across the US, Europe, U.K, and elsewhere. Ensuring the longevity and resilience of software systems is of paramount importance for fostering innovation, maintaining functionality, and mitigating the environmental impact of constant technological evolution. The three concepts usability, sustainability and reproducibility are interconnected with each other and cover a wide range of application areas. They affect all layers of the software process - from enabling reproducing experiments via an easy user interface to using containerization for application portability. This minitrack serves as a comprehensive exploration of diverse topics within the realm of software sustainability, encompassing intricate scenarios like containerization, strategies for enduring software solutions, usability and user interface considerations, as well as addressing challenges in data curation and provenance.