An IDE Plugin for Clone Management

Paper in proceeding, 2024

Development and maintenance in variant-rich systems often involves the replication of specific software code, known as software cloning. This process allows for code reuse but presents challenges in managing independently evolving variants. This paper discusses the necessity of effective clone management tools to maintain code quality and efficiency. We present an extension1 to the HAnS IDE plugin. This extension enhances the plugin by supporting basic clone management, and by facilitating the tracking and synchronization of cloned assets and features through a well-designed, lightweight trace database. The plugin is evaluated through unit and integration testing, as well as user experiments, demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing the challenges associated with software cloning. The evaluation results indicate that 80% of participants rated the trace database as intuitive, and 100% rated the notification system as both intuitive and user-friendly.