Faceted Navigation for Software Exploration

Abstract

Much of developers' time is spent in exploring and understanding an unfamiliar software space. In this paper, we present a novel approach that characterizes the code fragments along several orthogonal dimensions in order for developers to navigate complex software spaces in a flexible manner. Central to our approach are hierarchical faceted categories (HFC), which have become especially successful in supporting exploratory web search activities. We apply the HFC approach for exploring a sizeable open-source software system. Our preliminary evaluation shows that HFC are promising in supporting software exploration tasks.