Duplicated code or code clones are a kind of code smell that have both positive and negative impacts on the development and maintenance of software systems. Software clone research in the past mostly focused on the detection and analysis of code clones, while research in recent years extends to the whole spectrum of clone management. In the last decade, three surveys appeared in the literature, which cover the detection, analysis, and evolutionary characteristics of code clones. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on the state of the art in clone management, with in-depth investigation of clone management activities (e.g., tracing, refactoring, cost-benefit analysis) beyond the detection and analysis. This is the first survey on clone management, where we point to the achievements so far, and reveal avenues for further research necessary towards an integrated clone management system. We believe that we have done a good job in surveying the area of clone management and that this work may serve as a roadmap for future research in the area.

The vision of software clone management: Past, present, and future (Keynote paper)

CSMR is the premier European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering. Its purpose is to promote both discussion and interaction about evolution, maintenance and reengineering. Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to: o Evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Metrics and economics o Pattern languages for evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Experience reports (successes and failures) on evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Evolution, maintenance and reengineering tools o Enabling technologies for evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Formal methods to support evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Software evolution and architecture recovery o System assessment for evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Migration and maintenance issues o Dealing with legacy systems towards new technologies o Wrapping and interfacing legacy systems o Data reengineering o Reverse engineering of embedded (control, mobile, ...) systems o Web-site evolution, maintenance and reengineering o Evaluation and assessment of reverse engineering tools

7 th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering

Maintaining software systems is getting more complex and difficult task. Code clone is one of the factors that make software maintenance more difficult. A code clone is a code portion in source files that is identical or similar to another. If some faults are found in a code clone, it is necessary to correct the faults in its all code clones. We have developed a maintenance support environment, Gemini, which provides the user with the useful functions to analyze the code clones and modify them. However, through case studies, several problems were reported. That is, the clones provided by Gemini were not appropriate to merge into one module. In this paper, we intend to extend the functionality of Gemini to cope with the problems. Finally, we apply the extended Gemini to several software and evaluate the applicability of the new functions.

On software maintenance process improvement based on code clone analysis

Refactoring is a key approach for managing technical debt. In the past few years, refactoring techniques and tools have received considerable attention from researchers and tool vendors. However, several practical challenges must be overcome to facilitate the adoption of refactoring in industrial contexts. Results from a survey at the Siemens Corporate Development Center India highlight common challenges to refactoring adoption. The article also outlines ways to address these challenges and describes key initiatives the development center is planning and launching. This article is part of a special issue on Refactoring.

Challenges to and Solutions for Refactoring Adoption: An Industrial Perspective

In this paper, we present an in-depth empirical study on identifying clone fragments that can be important refactoring candidates. We mine association rules among clones in order to detect clone fragments that belong to the same clone class and have a tendency of changing together during software evolution. The idea is that if two or more clone fragments from the same class often change together (i.e., are likely to co-change) preserving their similarity, they might be important candidates for refactoring. Merging such clones into one (if possible) can potentially decrease future clone maintenance effort. We define a particular clone change pattern, the Similarity Preserving Change Pattern (SPCP), and consider the cloned fragments that changed according to this pattern (i.e., the SPCP clones) as important candidates for refactoring. For the purpose of our study, we implement a prototype tool called MARC that identifies SPCP clones and mines association rules among these. The rules as well as the SPCP clones are ranked for refactoring on the basis of their change-proneness. We applied MARC on thirteen subject systems and retrieved the refactoring candidates for three types of clones (Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3) separately. Our experimental results show that SPCP clones can be considered important candidates for refactoring. Clones that do not follow SPCP either evolve independently or are rarely changed. By considering SPCP clones for refactoring we not only can minimize refactoring effort considerably but also can reduce the possibility of delayed synchronizations among clones and thus, can minimize inconsistencies in software systems.

/pdf/automatic-ranking-of-clones-for-refactoring-through-mining-1hsegscx8n.pdf

Automatic ranking of clones for refactoring through mining association rules

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.

Prioritizing code clone detection results for clone management

CQMM (Code Quality Monitoring Method) is a means for systematically monitoring and improving code level quality of a system during development. It employs goal directed monitoring using quality models and static code analysis tools. In this paper, we present the CQMM method, learnings gathered through pilot studies, and changes needed for its large scale adoption within our organization. This exercise was an important step towards evolving an organization wide common minimum baseline for code-centric quality. Initial results indicate that the process helps in exposing important code-centric issues, besides sensitizing developers to coding practices. We also demonstrate the usefulness of the approach by tracking code level issues on select open source projects.

Continual monitoring of code quality

Siemens, Corporate Technology, Development Center, Asia Australia (CT DC AA) has been developing and maintaining several software projects for the Industry, Energy, Healthcare, and Infrastructure & Cities sectors of Siemens. The critical nature of these projects necessitates a high level of software code quality. As part of the code quality program at CT DC AA the strategy is to have a scalable method towards identification of issues affecting code quality of projects across the organization. Traditionally, code quality experts in Siemens used EMISQ method to assess code quality. EMISQ requires about three person months (two experts for six weeks) for 50-100 kLoC, making it effort intensive and time consuming. Thus, scaling this assessment method to include the hundreds of projects in CT DC AA poses many challenges. To address this, we have developed a lightweight assessment method called SCQAM (Structured Code Quality Assessment Method). SCQAM is an expert-based method wherein manual assessment of code quality by experts is directed by the systematic application of code analysis tools. In this paper, we describe the SCQAM method, experiences in applying it to projects in CT DC AA, challenges faced and initiatives taken to enable fixing of systemic issues reported by assessments. The insights from our SCQAM experience can provide useful pointers to other organizations and practitioners interested in assessment and improvement of software code quality.

SCQAM: a scalable structured code quality assessment method for industrial software

Duplicating code and modifying it is a useful convenience when editing within an IDE. This sequence of operations, termed copy-paste-modify, has the downside of proliferating "nearly identical" code segments or code clones and could lead to rapid degeneration of code. Although techniques for proactive identification of clones and differences between them have been studied, no clear method to control clone formation, based on "acceptability criteria," is known. In this paper, we present a technique to moderate the genesis of clones through copy-paste-modify operations. Our approach is guided by associating constraints formulated from predefined guidelines, and checking for their satisfaction at the time of copy and upon modification. By encoding "acceptability criteria" as constraints, our approach provides the means necessary for controlled creation of clones.

A method for proactive moderation of code clones in IDEs

Continual monitoring and model driven quality improvement methods are becoming critical for product quality within software development organizations. But, setting up such procedures within a global delivery organization poses challenges like - variation in the engagement models across different client projects, variations in build strategies and code ownership model, process related hindrances like overlapping quality processes of the delivery and the product organizations. Moreover, these challenges emerge overtime as the processes become more understood and accepted. We present evolution and design of COSMOS toolkit which exemplifies and addresses such variations in the delivery projects and provides a consistent continual reporting for organizations. The toolkit has become a primary enabler for adoption of a continual quality control process and CQMM, a model based quality improvement process. It addresses among others, key concerns like tools & build variability, legacy code & code ownership, model based rules selection & reporting, variations in applicable thresholds.

Making Continual Code Quality Monitoring and Control Processes Work in a Global Delivery Organization: COSMOS

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Himanshu Kumar Singh

Author Tools

Chat about Author