SurfClipse: Context-Aware Meta Search in the IDE

TL;DR

SurfClipse is a context-aware meta search tool integrated into IDEs that analyzes exceptions, retrieves relevant web pages from multiple sources, and ranks them to assist developers in debugging more effectively.

Contribution

It introduces a novel IDE-integrated meta search approach that considers exception context for more relevant web search results.

Findings

Successfully retrieves relevant web pages for exceptions

Improves search relevance by considering exception context

Provides interactive and proactive search modes

Abstract

Despite various debugging supports of the existing IDEs for programming errors and exceptions, software developers often look at web for working solutions or any up-to-date information. Traditional web search does not consider the context of the problems that they search solutions for, and thus it often does not help much in problem solving. In this paper, we propose a context-aware meta search tool, SurfClipse, that analyzes an encountered exception and its context in the IDE, and recommends not only suitable search queries but also relevant web pages for the exception (and its context). The tool collects results from three popular search engines and a programming Q & A site against the exception in the IDE, refines the results for relevance against the context of the exception, and then ranks them before recommendation. It provides two working modes--interactive and proactive to meet the versatile needs of the developers, and one can browse the result pages using a customized embedded browser provided by the tool. Tool page: www.usask.ca/~masud.rahman/surfclipse