Software evolution: the lifetime of fine-grained elements

A model regarding the lifetime of individual source code lines or tokens can estimate maintenance effort, guide preventive maintenance, and, more broadly, identify factors that can improve the efficiency of software development. We present methods and tools that allow tracking of each line’s or token’s birth and death. Through them, we...

Visualizing code and coverage changes for code review

One of the tasks of reviewers is to verify that code modifications are well tested. However, current tools offer little support in understanding precisely how changes to the code relate to changes to the tests. In particular, it is hard to see whether (modified) test code covers the changed code. To mitigate this problem, we developed OPERIAS...

Evaluating the Lifespan of Code Smells in a Software System using Software Repository Mining

An anti-pattern is a commonly occurring solution that will always have negative consequences, when applied to a recurring problem. Code smells are considered to be symptoms of anti-patterns and occur at source code level. The lifespan of code smells in a software system can be determined by mining the software repository on which the system is...