Change, Similarity and Redundancy in Software

软件中的变化、相似性和冗余

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-04396
• 负责人: Roy, Chanchal
• 金额: $ 3.13万
• 依托单位: University of Saskatchewan
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=634489
• 关键词: Change; Similarity; Redundancy; Software

Software clones are defined to be duplicated or similar fragments of code in a software system. Copying a code fragment and reusing it by pasting with editing changes is a common practice in software development. Developers in fact often intentionally practice cloning because of the underlying benefits such as faster development, reuse of well-tested code by avoiding risks, or time limits assigned to them. On the other hand, clones are the #1 code “bad smell” in Flower’s refactoring list. Recent studies both with industrial and open source software show that while clones are not always harmful and clones can be useful in many ways, many of them can also be detrimental to software maintenance. Of course, reusing a fragment containing unknown bugs may result in fault propagation, or any changes in a cloned fragment may lead to changes to all the similar fragments to it, which is challenging, time consuming, and error-prone. Clones are thus considered to be one of the primary contributors to the high maintenance cost of software, which is up to 80% of the total development cost.

软件克隆被定义为软件系统中重复的或相似的代码片段。复制代码片段并通过粘贴和编辑更改来重用它是软件开发中的常见做法。事实上，开发人员经常有意地实践克隆，因为潜在的好处，如更快的开发，通过避免风险重用经过良好测试的代码，或为它们分配时间限制。另一方面，克隆是Flower重构列表中的头号代码“臭味”。最近对工业和开源软件的研究表明，虽然克隆并不总是有害的，克隆在许多方面都是有用的，但其中许多也不利于软件维护。当然，重用包含未知错误的片段可能会导致错误传播，或者克隆片段中的任何更改都可能导致所有与其相似的片段发生更改，这是具有挑战性的，耗时的，并且容易出错。因此，克隆被认为是软件高维护成本的主要贡献者之一，高达总开发成本的80%。