Using structural context to recommend source code examples

Holmes, Reid; Murphy, Gail C.

doi:10.1109/icse.2005.1553554

Cited by 119 publications

(133 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…eRose uses CVS data to find files that have frequently been changed together. Holmes and Murphy (Holmes, 2005) propose using structures to create code recommendations during evolution tasks.…”

Section: Recommenders and Searchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theories, tools and research methods in program comprehension: past, present and future

Storey

2006

Software Qual J

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Program comprehension research can be characterized by both the theories that provide rich explanations about how programmers understand software, as well as the tools that are used to assist in comprehension tasks. In this paper, I review some of the key cognitive theories of program comprehension that have emerged over the past thirty years. Using these theories as a canvas, I then explore how tools that are commonly used today have evolved to support program comprehension. Specifically, I discuss how the theories and tools are related and reflect on the research methods that were used to construct the theories and evaluate the tools. The reviewed theories and tools are distinguished according to human characteristics, program characteristics, and the context for the various comprehension tasks. Finally, I predict how these characteristics will change in the future and speculate on how a number of important research directions could lead to improvements in program comprehension tool development and research methods.

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Section: Recommenders and Searchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theories, tools and research methods in program comprehension: past, present and future

Storey

2006

Software Qual J

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“…Modern software engineering tools are bringing more sophisticated search capabilities into the development environment extending the traditionally limited browsing and searching capabilities [19,30,44,39,42]. These tools vary in terms of the features they provide but some common ideas that are prevalent among them are the use of the developer's current context to generate queries and the integration of ranking techniques for the search results.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A test-driven approach to code search and its application to the reuse of auxiliary functionality

Lemos

Bajracharya

Ossher

et al. 2011

Information and Software Technology

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a b s t r a c tContext: Software developers spend considerable effort implementing auxiliary functionality used by the main features of a system (e.g., compressing/decompressing files, encryption/decription of data, scaling/ rotating images). With the increasing amount of open source code available on the Internet, time and effort can be saved by reusing these utilities through informal practices of code search and reuse. However, when this type of reuse is performed in an ad hoc manner, it can be tedious and error-prone: code results have to be manually inspected and integrated into the workspace. Objective: In this paper we introduce and evaluate the use of test cases as an interface for automating code search and reuse. We call our approach Test-Driven Code Search (TDCS). Test cases serve two purposes: (1) they define the behavior of the desired functionality to be searched; and (2) they test the matching results for suitability in the local context. We also describe CodeGenie, an Eclipse plugin we have developed that performs TDCS using a code search engine called Sourcerer. Method: Our evaluation consists of two studies: an applicability study with 34 different features that were searched using CodeGenie; and a performance study comparing CodeGenie, Google Code Search, and a manual approach. Results: Both studies present evidence of the applicability and good performance of TDCS in the reuse of auxiliary functionality. Conclusion: This paper presents an approach to source code search and its application to the reuse of auxiliary functionality. Our exploratory evaluation shows promising results, which motivates the use and further investigation of TDCS.

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“…Henrich and Morgenroth [3] propose a framework that enables the search for potentially useful artifacts during software development. Holmes and Murphy [4] proposes Strathcona, an Eclipse plugin that allows to search for source code examples, using the structural context of the code on which a developer is working when the developer requests for examples. While the focus of some of these works is in software reuse, our approach focuses on the artifacts that exist in the work environment of the developer.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

SDiC: Context-based retrieval in Eclipse

Antunes

Cordeiro

Gomes

2012

2012 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)

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While working in an IDE, developers typically deal with a large number of different artifacts at the same time. The software development process requires that they repeatedly switch between different artifacts, which often depends on searching for these artifacts in the source code structure. We propose a tool that integrates context-based search and recommendation of source code artifacts in Eclipse. The artifacts are collected from the workspace of the developer and represented using ontologies. A context model of the developer is used to improve search and give recommendations of these artifacts, which are ranked according to their relevance to the developer. The tool was tested by a group of developers and the results show that contextual information has an important role in retrieving relevant information for developers. I. INTRODUCTIONThe interest in context comes from different fields such as literature, philosophy, linguistics and computer science, with each field proposing its own view of context. In software development, developers need to cope with a large amount of contextual information that is typically not captured and processed in order to enrich their work environment. Especially, in the IDE, developers deal with dozens of artifacts at the same time. Their work requires them to repeatedly switch between different artifacts, which often depends on searching for these artifacts in the source code structure. The workspace of developers frequently comprises hundreds, if not thousands, of artifacts, which makes the task of searching for relevant artifacts very time consuming.We propose a tool, named SDiC (Software Development in Context), that integrates context-based search and recommendation of source code artifacts in Eclipse. The artifacts are collected from the workspace of the developer and represented from a structural and a lexical perspectives, formalized using ontologies. A context model is used to support the context-based search and recommendation of these artifacts, ranking the results according to their relevance to the developer. In the following sections we describe the knowledge base used and how the context model is applied during the retrieval process.

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Using structural context to recommend source code examples

Cited by 119 publications

References 13 publications

Theories, tools and research methods in program comprehension: past, present and future

Theories, tools and research methods in program comprehension: past, present and future

A test-driven approach to code search and its application to the reuse of auxiliary functionality

SDiC: Context-based retrieval in Eclipse

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