Code clone detection experience at microsoft

Abstract

Cloning source code is a common practice in the software development process. In general, the number of code clones increases in proportion to the growth of the code base. It is challenging to proactively keep clones consistent and remove unnecessary clones during the entire software development process of large-scale commercial software. In this position paper, we briefly share some typical usage scenarios of code clone detection that we collected from Microsoft engineers. We also discuss our experience on building XIAO, a code clone detection tool, and the feedback we have received from Microsoft engineers on using XIAO in real development settings.