Prioritizing code clone detection results for clone management

Clone detection through tools is a common practice in the software industry. Associated with clone detection is code clone management, which includes taking informed decisions for management of the large sets of clones as reported by the clone detection tools, a task that gets more challenging with larger code bases. In order to enable and ease the process of code clone management, we discuss various criteria that help in prioritizing the clone results. We consider the impact of clones with respect to factors of maintenance overhead, code quality, and refactoring cost. The criteria for prioritization are based on the need for industrial code to adhere to software quality standards. This paper attempts to provide a systematic approach for analyzing and prioritizing clones to determine the order of fixing. This methodology is currently being used in some of the Siemens Corporate Technology Development Center Asia Australia (CT DC AA) projects; a case study of one such project is presented in this paper.