Proactively managing copy-and-paste induced code clones

摘要

Programmers copy and paste code. As a result, similar code fragments (clones) are added into software systems. Like other software artifacts, clones require attention and effort from programmers so that they can be found, understood, and correctly adapted and evolved. In addition to what clone-detection-based tools can offer, other automated support can be developed to better assist programmers in these activities, for example, to compare and contrast code clones, or help edit (a group of) clones consistently and quickly. We describe several such features currently being developed in the CnP project on top of Eclipse and for Java.