Hist-Inspect: a tool for history-sensitive detection of code smells

Abstract

Hist-Inspect is a tool that allows the specification and evaluation of different configurations for detection strategies by means of a domain-specific language. The tool enables to easily adjust thresholds and combination of software metrics as well as compare the performance of conventional and history-sensitive detection strategies. The tool also provides a diverse set of views, including graphical representation of module evolution measures. These views enable the code reviewer to reason about the stability of individual modules, the growth or decline of a particular structural property (e.g. coupling or cohesion), without the burden of recovering all the values for each version under analysis.