Project Overview

Scatter plots have been widely used to provide a graphical representation of the results of clone detection tools. This project looks into an alternative visualization method by extending the AspectJ Development Tool (AJDT) Visualiser plugin that was originally used to display aspects in program modules. The freely available Java version of CloneDR^TM was integrated into Eclipse through a customized plugin. In addition to implementing an extension of the Visualiser, this plugin also utilizes Eclipse's features to provide an enhanced interface for CloneDR.

The process is depicted in Figure 1. Wizard pages in the Eclipse plugin assist users to determine the configuration settings for the clone detection procedure. These settings are passed to CloneDR (step 1). CloneDR will run and upon completion of its detection process will generate a text file containing its detection results. This file is parsed by the plugin (step 2) and the information is passed to three different views. One view displays the detection process information and statistics. The other two views display the clones that were detected through two types of representation: a text listing and the Visualiser view.

Two video demonstrations are provided above. The first shows the wizard pages that set up the configuration settings for the clone detection process. The second illustrates the display of the clone detection results after the execution of CloneDR.

Figure 1: Plugin architecture and process