5,677 research outputs found
Harmfulness of Code Duplication - A Structured Review of the Evidence
Duplication of code has long been thought to decrease changeability of systems, but recently doubts have been expressed whether this is true in general. This is a problem for researchers because it makes the value of research aimed against clones uncertain, and for practitioners as they cannot be sure whether their effort in reducing duplication is well-spent. In this paper we try to shed light on this is-sue by collecting empirical evidence in favor and against the nega-tive effects of duplication on changeability. We go beyond the flat yes/no-question of harmfulness and present an explanatory model to show the mechanisms through which duplication is suspected to affect quality. We aggregate the evidence for each of the causal links in the model. This sheds light on the current state of duplication re-search and helps practitioners choose between the available mitiga-tion strategies
Structured Review of Code Clone Literature
This report presents the results of a structured review of code clone literature. The aim of the review is to assemble a conceptual model of clone-related concepts which helps us to reason about clones. This conceptual model unifies clone concepts from a wide range of literature, so that findings about clones can be compared with each other
Understanding the Evolution of Code Clones in Software Systems
Code cloning is a common practice in software development. However, code cloning has both positive aspects such as accelerating the development process and negative aspects such as causing code bloat. After a decade of active research, it is clear that removing all of the clones from a software system is not desirable. Therefore, it is better to manage clones than to remove them. A software system can have thousands of clones in it, which may serve multiple purposes. However, some of the clones may cause unwanted management difficulties and clones like these should be refactored. Failure to manage clones may cause inconsistencies in the code, which is prone to error. Managing thousands of clones manually would be a difficult task. A clone management system can help manage clones and find patterns of how clones evolve during the evolution of a software system. In this research, we propose a framework for constructing and visualizing clone genealogies with change patterns (e.g., inconsistent changes), bug information, developer information and several other important metrics in a software system. Based on the framework we design and build an interactive prototype for a multi-touch surface (e.g., an iPad). The prototype uses a variety of techniques to support understanding clone genealogies, including: identifying and providing a compact overview of the clone genealogies along with their key characteristics; providing interactive navigation of genealogies, cloned source code and the differences between clone fragments; providing the ability to filter and organize genealogies based on their properties; providing a feature for annotating clone fragments with comments to aid future review; and providing the ability to contact developers from within the system to find out more information about specific clones. To investigate the suitability of the framework and prototype for investigating and managing cloned code, we elicit feedback from practicing researchers and developers, and we conduct two empirical studies: a detailed investigation into the evolution of function clones and a detailed investigation into how clones contribute to bugs. In both empirical studies we are able to use the prototype to quickly investigate the cloned source code to gain insights into clone use. We believe that the clone management system and the findings will play an important role in future studies and in managing code clones in software systems
Identifying developers’ habits and expectations in copy and paste programming practice
Máster Universitario en Investigación e Innovación en
Inteligencia Computacional y Sistemas InteractivosBoth novice and experienced developers rely more and more in external
sources of code to include into their programs by copy and paste code snippets. This
behavior differs from the traditional software design approach where cohesion was
achieved via a conscious design effort. Due to this fact, it is essential to know how copy
and paste programming practices are actually carried out, so that IDEs (Integrated
Development Environments) and code recommenders can be designed to fit with
developer expectations and habit
A dynamic mode of mitotic bookmarking by transcription factors.
During mitosis, transcription is shut off, chromatin condenses, and most transcription factors (TFs) are reported to be excluded from chromosomes. How do daughter cells re-establish the original transcription program? Recent discoveries that a select set of TFs remain bound on mitotic chromosomes suggest a potential mechanism for maintaining transcriptional programs through the cell cycle termed mitotic bookmarking. Here we report instead that many TFs remain associated with chromosomes in mouse embryonic stem cells, and that the exclusion previously described is largely a fixation artifact. In particular, most TFs we tested are significantly enriched on mitotic chromosomes. Studies with Sox2 reveal that this mitotic interaction is more dynamic than in interphase and is facilitated by both DNA binding and nuclear import. Furthermore, this dynamic mode results from lack of transcriptional activation rather than decreased accessibility of underlying DNA sequences in mitosis. The nature of the cross-linking artifact prompts careful re-examination of the role of TFs in mitotic bookmarking
Software Development Analytics in Practice: A Systematic Literature Review
Context:Software Development Analytics is a research area concerned with
providing insights to improve product deliveries and processes. Many types of
studies, data sources and mining methods have been used for that purpose.
Objective:This systematic literature review aims at providing an aggregate view
of the relevant studies on Software Development Analytics in the past decade
(2010-2019), with an emphasis on its application in practical settings.
Method:Definition and execution of a search string upon several digital
libraries, followed by a quality assessment criteria to identify the most
relevant papers. On those, we extracted a set of characteristics (study type,
data source, study perspective, development life-cycle activities covered,
stakeholders, mining methods, and analytics scope) and classified their impact
against a taxonomy. Results:Source code repositories, experimental case
studies, and developers are the most common data sources, study types, and
stakeholders, respectively. Product and project managers are also often
present, but less than expected. Mining methods are evolving rapidly and that
is reflected in the long list identified. Descriptive statistics are the most
usual method followed by correlation analysis. Being software development an
important process in every organization, it was unexpected to find that process
mining was present in only one study. Most contributions to the software
development life cycle were given in the quality dimension. Time management and
costs control were lightly debated. The analysis of security aspects suggests
it is an increasing topic of concern for practitioners. Risk management
contributions are scarce. Conclusions:There is a wide improvement margin for
software development analytics in practice. For instance, mining and analyzing
the activities performed by software developers in their actual workbench, the
IDE
Survey of Research on Software Clones
This report summarizes my overview talk on software clone detection
research. It first discusses the notion of software redundancy, cloning, duplication,
and similarity. Then, it describes various categorizations of clone types, empirical
studies on the root causes for cloning, current opinions and wisdom of consequences
of cloning, empirical studies on the evolution of clones, ways to remove, to avoid,
and to detect them, empirical evaluations of existing automatic clone detector performance
(such as recall, precision, time and space consumption) and their fitness
for a particular purpose, benchmarks for clone detector evaluations, presentation
issues, and last but not least application of clone detection in other related fields.
After each summary of a subarea, I am listing open research questions
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