Detecting broken pointcuts using structural commonality and degree of interest

Khatchadourian, Raffi and Rashid, Awais and Masuhara, Hidehiko and Watanabe, Takuya (2017) Detecting broken pointcuts using structural commonality and degree of interest. Science of Computer Programming, 150. pp. 56-74. ISSN 0167-6423

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Abstract

Pointcut fragility is a well-documented problem in Aspect-Oriented Programming; changes to the base-code can lead to join points incorrectly falling in or out of the scope of pointcuts. Deciding which pointcuts have broken due to base-code changes is a daunting venture, especially in large and complex systems. We present an automated approach that recommends pointcuts that are likely to require modification due to a particular base-code change, as well as ones that do not. Our hypothesis is that join points selected by a pointcut exhibit common structural characteristics. Patterns describing such commonality are used to recommend pointcuts that have potentially broken with a degree of confidence as the developer is typing. The approach is implemented as an extension to the popular Mylyn Eclipse IDE plug-in, which maintains focused contexts of entities relevant to the task at hand using a Degree of Interest (DOI) model. We show that it is accurate in revealing broken pointcuts by applying it to multiple versions of several open source projects and evaluating the quality of the recommendations produced against actual modifications. We found that our tool made broken pointcuts 2.14 times more interesting in the DOI model than unbroken ones, with a p-value under 0.1, indicating a significant difference in final DOI value between the two kinds of pointcuts (i.e., broken and unbroken).

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Science of Computer Programming
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Science of Computer Programming. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Science of Computer Programming, 150, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.scico.2017.06.011
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1700/1712
Subjects:
?? SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTSSOFTWARE MAINTENANCESOFTWARE TOOLSSOFTWARE ??
ID Code:
87029
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
18 Jul 2017 08:36
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Sep 2023 01:13