Visualization for Software Domain Extraction

Motivation

Software projects normally are built on top of many libraries that implement cross-project functionalities. Different projects would depend on different sets of libraries. Although there should be common libraries that crosscut many projects, projects in the same domain should share a specific set of them (e.g., game projects should normally depend on common game libraries). The analysis of those dependencies could lead to unveil the domain to which a project belongs. Visualization can provide a concrete representation to projects, libraries and their dependencies, encouraging exploration and detection of patterns.

Approach

In this project we will work preparing a dataset, modelling it, defining a similarity function, and exploring visualization techniques to infer the domain for open source projects. We will develop prototypes using Pharo (a Smalltalk inspired language) and Roassal (a visualization engine).

Research Questions

• How visualization can help to infer project domain?

Further reading

• Pharo: http://www.pharobyexample.org
• Roassal: http://agilevisualization.com

Contact Leonel Merino Boris Spasojević