  Quantum computing is a rapidly growing field attracting the interest of both
researchers and software developers. Supported by its numerous open-source
tools, developers can now build, test, or run their quantum algorithms.
Although the maintenance practices for traditional software systems have been
extensively studied, the maintenance of quantum software is still a new field
of study but a critical part to ensure the quality of a whole quantum computing
system. In this work, we set out to investigate the distribution and evolution
of technical debts in quantum software and their relationship with fault
occurrences. Understanding these problems could guide future quantum
development and provide maintenance recommendations for the key areas where
quantum software developers and researchers should pay more attention. In this
paper, we empirically studied 118 open-source quantum projects, which were
selected from GitHub. The projects are categorized into 10 categories. We found
that the studied quantum software suffers from the issues of code convention
violation, error-handling, and code design. We also observed a statistically
significant correlation between code design, redundant code or code convention,
and the occurrences of faults in quantum software.
