SourceMiner evolution: A tool for supporting feature evolution comprehension

Program comprehension is an essential activity to perform software maintenance and evolution. Comprehensibility often encompasses the analysis of individual logical units, called features, which are often scattered through many program modules. Understanding how the feature code is implemented along the software evolution history is essential, for instance, to perform refactoring activities. However, existing tools do not provide means to comprehend the feature code evolution. To overcome this shortcoming, this paper presents a tool called Source Miner Evolution (SME) that provides multiple interactive and coordinated views to comprehend feature code evolution. SME implements a feature-sensitive comparison of multiple program versions. Our usability assessment with experienced developers indicated that SME allows them to efficiently perform recurring comprehension tasks on evolving feature code. The developers' performance was influenced by the combination of visual SME mechanisms, such as colors, tool tips and menu-popup interactions over the features' code elements.