Critics: an interactive code review tool for searching and inspecting systematic changes

During peer code reviews, developers often examine program differences. When using existing program differencing tools, it is difficult for developers to inspect systematic changes—similar, related changes that are scattered across multiple files. Developers cannot easily answer questions such as "what other code locations changed similar to this change?" and "are there any other locations that are similar to this code but are not updated?" In this paper, we demonstrate Critics, an Eclipse plug-in that assists developers in inspecting systematic changes. It (1) allows developers to customize a context-aware change template, (2) searches for systematic changes using the template, and (3) detects missing or inconsistent edits. Developers can interactively refine the customized change template to see corresponding search results. Critics has potential to improve developer productivity in inspecting large, scattered edits during code reviews. The tool's demonstration video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2D7t_Z5rhk