NavClus: A graphical recommender for assisting code exploration

Abstract

Recently, several graphical tools have been proposed to help developers avoid becoming disoriented when working with large software projects. These tools visualize the locations that developers have visited, allowing them to quickly recall where they have already visited. However, developers also spend a significant amount of time exploring source locations to visit, which is a task that is not currently supported by existing tools. In this work, we propose a graphical code recommender NavClus, which helps developers find relevant, unexplored source locations to visit. NavClus operates by mining a developer's daily interaction traces, comparing the developer's current working context with previously seen contexts, and then predicting relevant source locations to visit. These locations are displayed graphically along with the already explored locations in a class diagram. As a result, with NavClus developers can quickly find, reach, and focus on source locations relevant to their working contexts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbrc5ERyWjQ.