Understanding source code evolution using abstract syntax tree matching

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Understanding source code evolution using abstract syntax tree matching

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ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes archive
Volume 30 , Issue 4 (July 2005) table of contents

SESSION: Mining Software Repositories (MSR) table of contents

Pages: 1 - 5

Year of Publication: 2005

ISSN:0163-5948

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Authors

Iulian Neamtiu	University of Maryland at College Park
Jeffrey S. Foster	University of Maryland at College Park
Michael Hicks	University of Maryland at College Park

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 22, Downloads (12 Months): 182, Citation Count: 9

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ABSTRACT

Mining software repositories at the source code level can provide a greater understanding of how software evolves. We present a tool for quickly comparing the source code of different versions of a C program. The approach is based on partial abstract syntax tree matching, and can track simple changes to global variables, types and functions. These changes can characterize aspects of software evolution useful for answering higher level questions. In particular, we consider how they could be used to inform the design of a dynamic software updating system. We report results based on measurements of various versions of popular open source programs. including BIND, OpenSSH, Apache, Vsftpd and the Linux kernel.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

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CITED BY 9

	Tobias Sager , Abraham Bernstein , Martin Pinzger , Christoph Kiefer, Detecting similar Java classes using tree algorithms, Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories, May 22-23, 2006, Shanghai, China
	Andrew Baumann , Jonathan Appavoo, Improving dynamic update for operating systems, Proceedings of the twentieth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles, October 23-26, 2005, Brighton, United Kingdom
	Andrew Baumann , Jonathan Appavoo , Robert W. Wisniewski , Dilma Da Silva , Orran Krieger , Gernot Heiser, Reboots are for hardware: challenges and solutions to updating an operating system on the fly, 2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference on Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, p.1-14, June 17-22, 2007, Santa Clara, CA
	Thomas Zimmermann, Fine-grained processing of CVS archives with APFEL, Proceedings of the 2006 OOPSLA workshop on eclipse technology eXchange, p.16-20, October 22-23, 2006, Portland, Oregon
	Iulian Neamtiu , Michael Hicks , Jeffrey S. Foster , Polyvios Pratikakis, Contextual effects for version-consistent dynamic software updatingalland safe concurrent programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.43 n.1, January 2008
	Miryung Kim , David Notkin , Dan Grossman, Automatic Inference of Structural Changes for Matching across Program Versions, Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering, p.333-343, May 20-26, 2007
	Gareth Stoyle , Michael Hicks , Gavin Bierman , Peter Sewell , Iulian Neamtiu, Mutatis Mutandis: Safe and predictable dynamic software updating, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.29 n.4, p.22-es, August 2007
	Miryung Kim , David Notkin, Program element matching for multi-version program analyses, Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories, May 22-23, 2006, Shanghai, China
	Huzefa Kagdi , Michael L. Collard , Jonathan I. Maletic, A survey and taxonomy of approaches for mining software repositories in the context of software evolution, Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice, v.19 n.2, p.77-131, March 2007