A Seeded Search for the Modularisation of Sequential Software Versions

Software module clustering is the process of partitioning the structure of the software system using low-level dependencies in the source code in order to understand and improve the system’s structure. A software clustering tool, Munch, was used to modularise sequential source code software check-ins to assess the degree of major changes. It uses a searchbased software engineering technique. This paper employs a seeding technique, based on results from previous modularisations, to speed up the process and reduce the running time. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the modularisation we conducted a number of experiments on our uniquely large and comprehensive real-world dataset. The results of the experiments present strong evidence to support the seeding strategy. Keywords clustering; modularisation; refactoring; seeding; time-series; fitness function; EVM; EVMD.