Identifying cross-cutting concerns using software repository mining

Cross-cutting concerns are pieces of functionality that have not been captured into a separate module, thereby hindering program comprehension and maintainability. Solving these problems requires first identifying these cross-cutting concerns in pieces of software. Several methods for identification have been proposed but the option of using software repository mining has largely been left unexplored. That technique can uncover relationships between modules that may not be present in the source code and thereby provide a different perspective on the cross-cutting concerns in a software system. We perform software repository mining on the repositories of two software systems for which the cross-cutting concerns are known: JHotDraw and Tomcat. Based on the results of the evaluation, we make some suggestions for future directions in the area of identifying crosscutting concerns using software repository mining.