CSER 2011 Spring Meeting - June 21 , 2011

Reusing a code fragment by copying and pasting with or without minor modifications is a technique frequently used by programmers, and thus software systems often have duplicate fragments of code in them. Such duplicated fragments are called code clones or simply clones. Although cloning is beneficial in some cases and often programmers intentionally use it, it can be detrimental to software maintenance. For example, if a bug is detected in a code fragment, all the fragments similar to it should be investigated to check for the same bug, and when enhancing or adapting a piece of code, duplicated fragments can multiply the work to be done. A recent study that works on industrial code shows that inconsistent changes to code duplicates are frequent and lead to severe unexpected behaviuor. In this workshop, first, we plan to discuss about the future trends of detecting clone clones, in particular we plan to talk about in efficiently detecting near-miss (Type 3) and semantic (Type 4) code clones. Second, we plan to focus on the insights of clone evolution in order both to find out the effects of clones in software maintenance, and the related issues of how to manage these clones during the evolution. Third, we plan to gather a set of features for a comprehensive clone management system along with the possible technologies of how to build such a clone management system. Finally, we plan to discuss the possible applications of clone detection in other areas of software engineering and vice versa. Format of the workshop: The workshop will be purely interactive in nature. Each speaker will talk about four to seven minutes on his/her position on code clones towards the objectives of the workshop and then will lead a discussion for about another three to six minutes on that topic and related issues. Each speaker will come up with one or two important questions related to their talk and these questions will work as the vehicle for the subsequent discussion. Depending on the availability of time, some speakers (especially the seniors ones) might get few extra minutes to lead the discussion. Invited Speakers cum panelist: Bram Adams, Queen’s University, [email protected] Liliane Barbour, Queen’s University, [email protected] Jeremy S. Bradbury, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), [email protected] James R. Cordy, Queen’s University, [email protected] Massimiliano Di Penta, University of Sannio, [email protected] Michael Godfrey, University of Waterloo, [email protected] Scott Grant, Queen’s University, [email protected] Daqing Hou, Clarkson University, [email protected] Andrian Marcus, Wayne State University, [email protected] Doug Martin, Queen’s University, [email protected] Philipp Schügerl, Concordia University, [email protected] Minhaz F. Zibran, University of Saskatchewan, [email protected]