Comente+: A Tool for Improving Source Code Documentation Using Information Retrieval

Abstract

Document source code is seen as a boring time consuming task by several developers. However, a welldocumented source code, allow developers to have a better visibility into what was and is being developed, helping, for example, the reuse of the code. This study presents a semi-automatic method for documentation of source code from the existing artifacts in a software project under development. The method aims to reduce developer's workload, allowing them to work on other tasks of the project and/or ensure that the project deadlines will be met. The method, implemented in a tool, called Comente+, is capable of creating or updating comments into a source code from gathered information recovered from the project artifacts. To implement Comente+, we used an information retrieval approach. We performed some experiments with real data to validate this approach. For that, we created a special measure that estimates how well documented a source code is.