Copy-paste redeemed
Narasimhan, Krishna and Reichenbach, Christoph LU
(2016)
Software Engineering-Konferenz, SE 2016 - Software Engineering Conference, SE 2016
In Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), Proceedings - Series of the Gesellschaft fur Informatik (GI)
P252.
p.61-62
- Abstract
Software evolves continuously. As software evolves, it's code bases require implementations of new features. These new functionalities are sometimes mere extensions of existing functionalities with minor changes. A commonly used method of extending an existing feature into a similar new feature is to copy the existing feature and modify it. This method of extending feature is called "Copy-paste-modify". Another method of achieving the same goal of extending existing feature into similar feature is abstracting the multiple similar features into one common feature with appropriate selectors that enable choosing between the features. The advantages of the "Copy-paste-modify" technique range from speed of development to reduced possibility... (More)
Software evolves continuously. As software evolves, it's code bases require implementations of new features. These new functionalities are sometimes mere extensions of existing functionalities with minor changes. A commonly used method of extending an existing feature into a similar new feature is to copy the existing feature and modify it. This method of extending feature is called "Copy-paste-modify". Another method of achieving the same goal of extending existing feature into similar feature is abstracting the multiple similar features into one common feature with appropriate selectors that enable choosing between the features. The advantages of the "Copy-paste-modify" technique range from speed of development to reduced possibility of breaking existing feature. The advantages of abstraction vary from user preference to have abstracted code to long term maintenance benefits. In our paper, we describe an informal poll and discuss related work to confirm our beliefs about the advantages of each method of extending features. We observe a potential compromise while developers extend features which are near-clones of existing features. We propose to address this dilemma by coming up with a novel approach that can semi-automatically abstract nearclone features and evaluate our approach by building a prototype in C++ and abstracting near-clone methods in popular open source repositories.
(Less)
- author
- Narasimhan, Krishna
and Reichenbach, Christoph
LU
- publishing date
- 2016
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Abstraction, Refactoring, Software clones, Software evolution, Static analysis
- host publication
- Software Engineering 2016
- series title
- Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), Proceedings - Series of the Gesellschaft fur Informatik (GI)
- editor
- Knoop, Jens and Zdun, Uwe
- volume
- P252
- pages
- 2 pages
- publisher
- Gesellschaft fur Informatik
- conference name
- Software Engineering-Konferenz, SE 2016 - Software Engineering Conference, SE 2016
- conference location
- Wien, Austria
- conference dates
- 2016-02-23 - 2016-02-26
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85016252704
- ISSN
- 1617-5468
- ISBN
- 9783885796466
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- df65950a-58c4-465f-88ea-867fc023a710
- alternative location
- https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/722;jsessionid=481FFCA151E5944AB67DAF24D103282F
- date added to LUP
- 2021-12-06 10:49:56
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 15:23:25
@inproceedings{df65950a-58c4-465f-88ea-867fc023a710,
abstract = {{<p>Software evolves continuously. As software evolves, it's code bases require implementations of new features. These new functionalities are sometimes mere extensions of existing functionalities with minor changes. A commonly used method of extending an existing feature into a similar new feature is to copy the existing feature and modify it. This method of extending feature is called "Copy-paste-modify". Another method of achieving the same goal of extending existing feature into similar feature is abstracting the multiple similar features into one common feature with appropriate selectors that enable choosing between the features. The advantages of the "Copy-paste-modify" technique range from speed of development to reduced possibility of breaking existing feature. The advantages of abstraction vary from user preference to have abstracted code to long term maintenance benefits. In our paper, we describe an informal poll and discuss related work to confirm our beliefs about the advantages of each method of extending features. We observe a potential compromise while developers extend features which are near-clones of existing features. We propose to address this dilemma by coming up with a novel approach that can semi-automatically abstract nearclone features and evaluate our approach by building a prototype in C++ and abstracting near-clone methods in popular open source repositories.</p>}},
author = {{Narasimhan, Krishna and Reichenbach, Christoph}},
booktitle = {{Software Engineering 2016}},
editor = {{Knoop, Jens and Zdun, Uwe}},
isbn = {{9783885796466}},
issn = {{1617-5468}},
keywords = {{Abstraction; Refactoring; Software clones; Software evolution; Static analysis}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{61--62}},
publisher = {{Gesellschaft fur Informatik}},
series = {{Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), Proceedings - Series of the Gesellschaft fur Informatik (GI)}},
title = {{Copy-paste redeemed}},
url = {{https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/722;jsessionid=481FFCA151E5944AB67DAF24D103282F}},
volume = {{P252}},
year = {{2016}},
}