Slicing Fine-Grained Code Change History

Katsuhisa MARUYAMA; Takayuki OMORI; Shinpei HAYASHI

doi:10.1587/transinf.2015EDP7282

Slicing Fine-Grained Code Change History

Katsuhisa MARUYAMA, Takayuki OMORI, Shinpei HAYASHI

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Change-aware development environments can automatically record fine-grained code changes on a program and allow programmers to replay the recorded changes in chronological order. However, since they do not always need to replay all the code changes to investigate how a particular entity of the program has been changed, they often eliminate several code changes of no interest by manually skipping them in replaying. This skipping action is an obstacle that makes many programmers hesitate when they use existing replaying tools. This paper proposes a slicing mechanism that automatically removes manually skipped code changes from the whole history of past code changes and extracts only those necessary to build a particular class member of a Java program. In this mechanism, fine-grained code changes are represented by edit operations recorded on the source code of a program and dependencies among edit operations are formalized. The paper also presents a running tool that slices the operation history and replays its resulting slices. With this tool, programmers can avoid replaying nonessential edit operations for the construction of class members that they want to understand. Experimental results show that the tool offered improvements over conventional replaying tools with respect to the reduction of the number of edit operations needed to be examined and over history filtering tools with respect to the accuracy of edit operations to be replayed.

Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E99-D No.3 pp.671-687

Publication Date: 2016/03/01

Publicized: 2015/12/21

Online ISSN: 1745-1361

DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2015EDP7282

Type of Manuscript: PAPER

Category: Software Engineering

Authors

Katsuhisa MARUYAMA
  Ritsumeikan University
Takayuki OMORI
  Ritsumeikan University
Shinpei HAYASHI
  Tokyo Institute of Technology

Keyword

software maintenance and evolution, program comprehension, integrated development environments, program slicing, code changes

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Katsuhisa MARUYAMA, Takayuki OMORI, Shinpei HAYASHI, "Slicing Fine-Grained Code Change History" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information, vol. E99-D, no. 3, pp. 671-687, March 2016, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2015EDP7282.
Abstract: Change-aware development environments can automatically record fine-grained code changes on a program and allow programmers to replay the recorded changes in chronological order. However, since they do not always need to replay all the code changes to investigate how a particular entity of the program has been changed, they often eliminate several code changes of no interest by manually skipping them in replaying. This skipping action is an obstacle that makes many programmers hesitate when they use existing replaying tools. This paper proposes a slicing mechanism that automatically removes manually skipped code changes from the whole history of past code changes and extracts only those necessary to build a particular class member of a Java program. In this mechanism, fine-grained code changes are represented by edit operations recorded on the source code of a program and dependencies among edit operations are formalized. The paper also presents a running tool that slices the operation history and replays its resulting slices. With this tool, programmers can avoid replaying nonessential edit operations for the construction of class members that they want to understand. Experimental results show that the tool offered improvements over conventional replaying tools with respect to the reduction of the number of edit operations needed to be examined and over history filtering tools with respect to the accuracy of edit operations to be replayed.
URL: https://globals.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2015EDP7282/_p

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@ARTICLE{e99-d_3_671,
author={Katsuhisa MARUYAMA, Takayuki OMORI, Shinpei HAYASHI, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={Slicing Fine-Grained Code Change History},
year={2016},
volume={E99-D},
number={3},
pages={671-687},
abstract={Change-aware development environments can automatically record fine-grained code changes on a program and allow programmers to replay the recorded changes in chronological order. However, since they do not always need to replay all the code changes to investigate how a particular entity of the program has been changed, they often eliminate several code changes of no interest by manually skipping them in replaying. This skipping action is an obstacle that makes many programmers hesitate when they use existing replaying tools. This paper proposes a slicing mechanism that automatically removes manually skipped code changes from the whole history of past code changes and extracts only those necessary to build a particular class member of a Java program. In this mechanism, fine-grained code changes are represented by edit operations recorded on the source code of a program and dependencies among edit operations are formalized. The paper also presents a running tool that slices the operation history and replays its resulting slices. With this tool, programmers can avoid replaying nonessential edit operations for the construction of class members that they want to understand. Experimental results show that the tool offered improvements over conventional replaying tools with respect to the reduction of the number of edit operations needed to be examined and over history filtering tools with respect to the accuracy of edit operations to be replayed.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2015EDP7282},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={March},}

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TY - JOUR
TI - Slicing Fine-Grained Code Change History
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 671
EP - 687
AU - Katsuhisa MARUYAMA
AU - Takayuki OMORI
AU - Shinpei HAYASHI
PY - 2016
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2015EDP7282
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E99-D
IS - 3
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - March 2016
AB - Change-aware development environments can automatically record fine-grained code changes on a program and allow programmers to replay the recorded changes in chronological order. However, since they do not always need to replay all the code changes to investigate how a particular entity of the program has been changed, they often eliminate several code changes of no interest by manually skipping them in replaying. This skipping action is an obstacle that makes many programmers hesitate when they use existing replaying tools. This paper proposes a slicing mechanism that automatically removes manually skipped code changes from the whole history of past code changes and extracts only those necessary to build a particular class member of a Java program. In this mechanism, fine-grained code changes are represented by edit operations recorded on the source code of a program and dependencies among edit operations are formalized. The paper also presents a running tool that slices the operation history and replays its resulting slices. With this tool, programmers can avoid replaying nonessential edit operations for the construction of class members that they want to understand. Experimental results show that the tool offered improvements over conventional replaying tools with respect to the reduction of the number of edit operations needed to be examined and over history filtering tools with respect to the accuracy of edit operations to be replayed.
ER -