Title :
Approximate Code Search in Program Histories
Author :
Bazrafshan, Saman ; Koschke, Rainer ; Göde, Nils
Author_Institution :
Univ. of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Abstract :
Very often a defect must be corrected not only in the current version of a program at one particular place but in many places and many other versions -- possibly even in different development branches. Consequently, we need a technique to efficiently locate all approximate matches of an arbitrary defective code fragment in the program´s history as they may need to be fixed as well. This paper presents an approximate whole-program code search in multiple releases and branches. We evaluate this technique for real-world defects of various large and realistic programs having multiple releases and branches. We report runtime measurements and recall using varying levels of allowable differences of the approximate search.
Keywords :
approximation theory; codes; software engineering; approximate code search; program code search; program histories; runtime measurements; software development process; Approximation algorithms; Cloning; Dynamic programming; Indexes; Pattern matching; Runtime; Software; approximate search; clone detection; incremental search;
Conference_Titel :
Reverse Engineering (WCRE), 2011 18th Working Conference on
Conference_Location :
Limerick
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-1948-6
DOI :
10.1109/WCRE.2011.22