Detecting Merging and Splitting using Origin Analysis

Merging and splitting source code artifacts is a common activity during the lifespan of a software system; as developers rethink the essential structure of a system or plan for a new evolutionary direction, so must they be able to reorganize the design artifacts at various abstraction levels as seems appropriate. However, while the raw effects of such changes may be plainly evident in the new artifacts, the original intent of the design changes is often lost. In this paper, we discuss how we have extended origin analysis [10, 5] to aid in the detection of merging and splitting of files and functions in procedural code; in particular, we show how reasoning about how call relationships have changed can aid a developer in locating where merges and splits have occurred, thereby helping to recover information about the intent of the design change. We also describe a case study of these techniques (as implemented in the Beagle tool) using the PostgreSQL database as the candidate system.