Hot clones, maintaining a link between software clones across repositories

Abstract

Code duplication is common in current programming-practice: programmers search for snippets of code, incorporate them into their projects and then modify them to their needs. In today's practice, no automated scheme is in place to inform both parties of any distant changes of the code. As code snippets continues to evolve both on the side of the user and on the side of the author, both may wish to benefit from remote bug fixes or refinements---authors may be interested in the actual usage of their code snippets, and researchers could gather information on clone usage. We propose maintaining a link between software clones across repositories and outline how the links can be created and maintained.