Sourceminer: Towards an extensible multi-perspective software visualization environment

Abstract

In spite of the available resources provided by modern IDEs, program understanding remains as a difficult task in software engineering. This paper presents a software visualization environment named SourceMiner. Implemented as an Eclipse plug-in to enhance software comprehension activities, SourceMiner is an extensible, interactive and coordinated multiperspective environment. This paper describes the principles behind the design of SourceMiner, and discusses how it has been used to support software comprehension activities such as the identification of code smells and the characterization of object-oriented software systems.