Controlling Software Evolution Process Using Code Smell Visualization

Abstract

Software change is inevitable, evolution becomes a part of software lifetime, and software release becomes more frequent. Hence there is a need for the project manager to inspect and control the process during software development and evolution. In the evolutionary stage, developers will face problems related to program code, one of that is identification of code smells. This problem could negatively affect maintainability in evolution, a developer needs more time and money. Visualization techniques turn data into a visual form so that it can provide information that is easier to understand. In software evolution, visualization mostly is used to view structure code. Previous research on evolution visualization limited to visualize the addition of code, the last update, release history, and information of developer that made the last change in program. However, this visualization is not enough to support understanding for the developers. We propose a visualization method for identifying code smell of the evolution software on java programming, so the developers can more easily understand the code that will be evolved. By knowing where the smell of code in the program, programmers can immediately do refactoring, the time and costs needed will also be low. Visualization of code smell is something new in the domain of software evolution. Finally, this design created to build tools in detecting code smells for software evolution process control.