Automated Transplantation of Call Graph and Layout Features into Kate

We report the automated transplantation of two features currently missing from Kate: call graph generation and automatic layout for C programs, which have been requested by users on the Kate development forum. Our approach uses a lightweight annotation system with Search Based techniques augmented by static analysis for automated transplanting. The results are promising: on average, our tool requires 101 minutes of standard desktop machine time to transplant the call graph feature, and 31 minutes to transplant the layout feature. We repeated each experiment 20 times and validated the resulting transplants using unit, regression and acceptance test suites. In 34 of 40 experiments conducted our search-based autotransplantation tool, μSCALPEL, was able to successfully transplant the new functionality, passing all tests.