Context-Based Search, Recommendation and Browsing in Software Development

Authors

Abstract

With workspaces frequently comprising hundreds, or even thousands, of artifacts, developers spend a considerable amount of time navigating the source code or searching for a specific source code artifact they need to work. With the aim of helping developers during their work, the authors propose a context-based approach to search, recommend and browse source code in the workspace. The source code structure stored in the workspace of the developer is represented in a knowledge base, and a context model represents the source code elements that are more relevant for the developer in a specific moment. These structures are then used to improve the retrieval, ranking and navigation of source code elements. The experiments conducted with developers showed that the use of contextual information is of valuable importance to help identify the most relevant source code elements for the developer at each moment.

Subject

Artificial Intelligence

Related Project

SDiC: Software Development in Context

Book Chapter

Context in Computing, A Cross-Disciplinary Approach for Modeling the Real World, 4, pp. 45-62, Springer New York, December 2014

DOI