StarGate: A Unified, Interactive Visualization of Software Projects

Abstract

With the success of open source software projects, such as Apache and Mozilla, comes the opportunity to study the development process. In this paper, we present StarGate: a novel system for visualizing software projects. Whereas previous software project visualizations concentrated mainly on the source code changes, we literally place the developers in the center of our design. Developers are grouped visually into clusters corresponding to the areas of the file repository they work on the most. Connections are drawn between people who communicate via email. The changes to the repository are also displayed. With StarGate, it is easy to look beyond the source code and see trends in developer activity. The system can be used by anyone interested in the project, but it especially benefits project managers, project novices and software engineering researchers.