Software Visualization is the field of Software Engineering that aims to help people to understand software through the use of visual resources. It can be effectively used to analyze and understand the large amount of data produced during software evolution. Several Software Evolution Visualization (SEV) approaches have been proposed. The goals of the proposed approaches are varied, and they try to help programmers and managers to deal with software evolution in their daily software activities. Despite their goals, their applicability in real development scenarios is questionable. In this chapter, the authors discuss the current state of the art and challenges in software evolution visualization, presenting issues and problems related to the area, and they propose some solutions and recommendations to circumvent them. Finally, the authors discuss some research directions for the SEV domain.
TopIntroduction
Software evolution generally deals with large amounts of data that originates from heterogeneous sources such as Software Configuration Management (SCM) repositories, Bug Tracking Systems (BTS), mailing and project discussion lists. One of the key aspects of software evolution is to build theories and models that enable us to understand the past and present, as well as predict future properties related to software maintenance activities, and hence support software maintenance tasks.
Software Visualization (SoftVis) is the field of Software Engineering (SE) that aims to help people to understand software through the use of visual resources (Diehl, 2007), and it can be effectively used to analyze and understand the large amount of data produced during software evolution. For this reason, many researchers have been proposing Software Evolution Visualization (SEV) tools (Kuhn, Erni, Loretan, Nierstrasz, 2010)(Voinea, Lukkien & Telea, 2007)(Fischer & Gall, 2004)(German, Hindle & Jordan, 2006)(Cepda, Magdaleno, Murta & Werner, 2010)(Eick, Steffen & Sumner Jr, 1992). In general, these tools analyze the evolution of the software with respect to a set of software maintenance related questions.
Despite the goals of the software evolution visualization approaches, most have yet to be used in industrial environments. SEV approaches usually provide good and attractive visual metaphors, but how to use them within the software development process remains an open question. Several SEV tools are proposed as proof of concepts that is not evolved anymore.
This chapter covers Software Evolution Visualization (SEV) approaches, providing information about how SEV research is structured, synthesizing current evidence on the goals of the proposed approaches and identifying key challenges for its use in practice. This text is based on a mapping study that was carried out to analyze how the SEV area is structured (Novais et al., 2013a).
In the following sections we will discuss the current state and challenges in software evolution visualization. We will present issues and problems related to the area, and propose some solutions and recommendations to circumvent them. Finally, we will discuss some research directions for the SEV domain.