DMS: program transformations for practical scalable software evolution

TL;DR: This paper presents an efficient algorithm for identifying similar subtrees and apply it to tree representations of source code and implemented this algorithm as a clone detection tool called DECKARD and evaluated it on large code bases written in C and Java including the Linux kernel and JDK.

TL;DR: A qualitative comparison and evaluation of the current state-of-the-art in clone detection techniques and tools is provided, and a taxonomy of editing scenarios that produce different clone types and a qualitative evaluation of current clone detectors are evaluated.

TL;DR: The state of the art in clone detection research is surveyed, the clone terms commonly used in the literature are described along with their corresponding mappings to the commonly used clone types and several open problems related to clone detectionResearch are pointed out.

TL;DR: The implemented app clone detection system uses a geometry characteristic of dependency graphs to measure the similarity between methods in two apps, and synthesizes the method-level similarities and draws a Y/N conclusion on app (core functionality) cloning.

TL;DR: The paper presents simple and practical methods for detecting exact and near miss clones over arbitrary program fragments in program source code by using abstract syntax trees and suggests that clone detection could be useful in producing more structured code, and in reverse engineering to discover domain concepts and their implementations.

TL;DR: The paper sketches the problem and the required transforms, and discusses a case study involving over a million lines of source code, to remove configuration aspects from an industrial-strength transformation system.

TL;DR: Porting an undocumented program without any source changes demonstrates the value of a transformational theory of maintenance.