CMT: A Comprehensive Clone Management Solution

摘要

Copying existing code for reuse is a common practice during software development and maintenance. This leads to duplication of code in software systems, also called code clones. Clones can be spotted using any available clone detection tool. A common activity followed by detection is to refactor and remove clones. However, for pragmatic reasons, it is not always possible to remove clones and hence clones should be managed effectively to avoid any negative impacts on software maintenance. We present CMT, an Eclipse IDE integrated tool that provides a comprehensive clone management mechanism including clone detection, clone tracking, clone analysis, clone visualization, meta-level clone unification, and controlled clone generation for code-fragment level simple clones and higher level structural clones.