Improving Comprehensibility of Source Code via Traceability Information: a Controlled Experiment

Abstract

The presence of traceability links between software artefacts is very important to achieve high comprehensibility and maintainability. This is confirmed by several researches and tools aiming at support traceability link maintenance and recovery. We propose to use traceability information combined with Information Retrieval techniques within an Eclipse plug-in to show the software engineer the similarity between source code components being developed and the high level artefacts they should be traced on. Such a similarity suggests actions aiming at improving the correct usage of identifiers and comments in source code and, as a consequence, the traceability and the comprehensibility level. The approach and tool have been assessed with a controlled experiment performed with master students.