Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

3-2013

Abstract

Many active research studies in software engineering, such as detection of recurring bug fixes, detection of copyand- paste bugs, and automated program transformation tools, are motivated by the assumption that many code changes (e.g., changing an identifier name) in software systems are widespread to many locations and are similar to one another. However, there is no study so far that actually analyzes widespread changes in software systems. Understanding the nature of widespread changes could empirically support the assumption, which provides insight to improve the research studies and related tools. Our study in this paper addresses such a need. We propose a semi-automated approach that recovers code changes involving widespread changes in software systems. We further manually analyze more than nine hundred widespread changes recovered from eight software systems and categorize them into 11 families. These widespread changes and their associated families help us understand better why these widespread changes are made.

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

2013 17th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR 2013): Proceedings, Genova, Italy, 5-8 March 2013

First Page

5

Last Page

14

ISBN

9781467358330

Identifier

10.1109/CSMR.2013.11

Publisher

IEEE

City or Country

Piscataway, NJ

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

http://doi.org/10.1109/CSMR.2013.11

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