A Clustering-Based Approach to Enriching Code Foraging Environment
本文提出一种基于最优觅食理论的代码导航理论，并开发框架自动评估聚类对代码觅食的影响，发现聚类能丰富软件环境、提高觅食效率，有助于设计更好的代码导航工具。
Developers often spend valuable time navigating and seeking relevant code in software maintenance. Currently, there is a lack of theoretical foundations to guide tool design and evaluation to best shape the code base to developers. This paper contributes a unified code navigation theory in light of the optimal food-foraging principles. We further develop a novel framework for automatically assessing the foraging mechanisms in the context of program investigation. We use the framework to examine to what extent the clustering of software entities affects code foraging. Our quantitative analysis of long-lived open-source projects suggests that clustering enriches the software environment and improves foraging efficiency. Our qualitative inquiry reveals concrete insights into real developer's behavior. Our research opens the avenue toward building a new set of ecologically valid code navigation tools.