Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Tracking evolution of clones over time...

Tracking the evolution of clones over time...
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4222578

Source code cloning usually goes unnoticed until things start to go bad for the company. Managers tend to look into static code analysis and then realize that they've missed the train when cloning was still manageable and could be contained.

I like this paper since it gives a certain perspective of the code clone measurement - tracking over time. The method is not trivial to apply, but there is a tool (Java only, though) which can support automated tracking of clones.

I will set it as a project for my students to get in touch with the authors and develop a tool for other languages.

@Miroslaw Staron

Using entropy theories to predict bugs...

Using Entropy measurements applied to source code changes to predict bugs.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6416630&tag=1

This article takes a slightly new angle on a well-known problem of predicting bugs in source code. The authors take source code changes and use that as an input to calculate entropy and predict bugs.

Based on their results from applying of this approach on Mozilla's code, the results seem to be promising...

@MiroslawStaron