An Eclipse Plugin to Support Agile Reuse

Reuse in an Agile context is largely an unexplored research topic. On the surface, these two software engineering techniques would appear to be incompatible due to contradictory principles. For example, Agile components are usually accompanied with little or no support materials, which is likely to hamper their reuse. However we propose that Agile Reuse is possible and indeed advantageous. We have developed an Eclipse plug-in, named RASCAL, to support Agile Reuse. RASCAL is a recommender agent that infers the need for a reusable component and proactively recommends that component to the developer using a technique consistent with Agile principles. We present the benefits and the challenges encountered when implementing an Agile Reuse tool, paying particular to attention to the XP methodology, and detail our recommendation technique. Our overall results suggest RASCAL is a promising approach for enabling reuse in an Agile environment.