software evolution visualization

www.win.tue.nl/~lvoinea/VCN.html Eindhoven, 03.02.2006

Software Evolution Visualization

Lucian Voinea


Why Software Evolution Visualization ?

Software understanding- what is the structure of the project ?- what is important ?- what is difficult ?- who work on it ?- what parts are connected to a given part ?- what parts refer to a given aspect ?

Product and process assessment- what is the process ?- what is the core team ? - where is the activity concentrated ?- what is stable ?


ChallengesData acquisition- data source SW Configuration Management

- long acquisition times- large storage space, large bandwidth- data parsing & maintenance

Data analysis- Enrich recorded evolution data E.g. evolution similarity metrics

Data visualization- multivariate : 10s attributes (Demo 6 attributes)- large data amount : 100s files,10s versions, 1000s lines

VTK – 2700 files x 100 versionsArgoUML – 4452 files x 80 versions

SW Configuration Management≠

SW evolution mining


version control management

system

data extraction

CVS

Project evolutionvisualization

File evolutionvisualization

CVSscanCVSgrab

SW Evolution Visualization Toolset


CVSgrab

V1 V2 V3

F2

F3

F4

TimeF1

Files

Color - encodes a file metric computed on a given version

E.g. File type, Version author, Size increase, Release ID,Specific text, Activity

Vertical layout – given by a sort criteria

E.g. Creation time,Folder, Activity, Similarity

Metric views System evolution at time ti

Evolutionof file Fi


Time

Files

CVSgrab Example Color encodes version author

Horizontalmetric :Release ID

Vertical metric : similarity

Diff

eren

tS

imila

r


CVSscan

if self.bShowClusterColor:glBlendFunc(GL_ONE_MINUS_...glEnable(GL_BLEND) yPos = 0 bSwitch = Truefor i in lCushionMap: if bSwitch: cushions.drawColorCl.. else: cushions.drawColorClus… bSwitch = not bSwitch yPos = yPos + i glDisable(GL_BLEND) #cushion clustersglBlendFunc(GL_ZERO,GL_... glEnable(GL_BLEND) yPos = 0 bSwitch = True

Timev1 v2 v3 v4 v5

Color - encodes a line metric


Deleted lines Lines to be

inserted

Constant line New lines Legend

Normal Layout

Discrete time (versions) Discrete time (versions)

Horizontal Layout

Line layout

CVSscan


CVSscan Example

Color encodes content Color encodes authors


Conclusions

www.win.tue.nl/~lvoinea/VCN.html

• Toolset for visualization of software evolution : CVSgrab & CVSscan

• Exploit source code history from CVS as main source for getting insight in the structure and development process

• Complements existing reverse engineering and code navigation tools

• Outlook: Improve the data analysis step, find mechanisms for annotation management, improve selection mechanisms, enhance the visualization with new features, extend the data acquisition sources and types…

software evolution visualization

Documents