Evaluating the Performance of Clone Detection Tools in Detecting Cloned Co-change Candidates

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how well various clone detection tools identify cloned co-change candidates, which are code fragments that need simultaneous changes during software evolution, providing insights for better change impact analysis.

Contribution

It is the first comprehensive study comparing clone detection tools specifically for detecting cloned co-change candidates across multiple systems.

Findings

Different tools vary significantly in detection accuracy.

Certain configurations outperform others in identifying cloned co-change candidates.

The study offers guidelines for selecting and configuring clone detection tools for change impact analysis.

Abstract

Co-change candidates are the group of code fragments that require a change if any of these fragments experience a modification in a commit operation during software evolution. The cloned co-change candidates are a subset of the co-change candidates, and the members in this subset are clones of one another. The cloned co-change candidates are usually created by reusing existing code fragments in a software system. Detecting cloned co-change candidates is essential for clone-tracking, and studies have shown that we can use clone detection tools to find cloned co-change candidates. However, although several studies evaluate clone detection tools for their accuracy in detecting cloned fragments, we found no study that evaluates clone detection tools for detecting cloned co-change candidates. In this study, we explore the dimension of code clone research for detecting cloned co-change candidates. We compare the performance of 12 different configurations of nine promising clone detection tools in identifying cloned co-change candidates from eight open-source C and Java-based subject systems of various sizes and application domains. A ranked list and analysis of the results provides valuable insights and guidelines into selecting and configuring a clone detection tool for identifying co-change candidates and leads to a new dimension of code clone research into change impact analysis.