Metric Pictures: Source Code Images for Visualization, Analysis and Elaboration
S. Murad, Ignazio Passero, Rita Francese · 2011
Source code tracking, analysis and comprehension are difficult tasks because of the complex nature of software. Source code metrics evaluate some aspects of software artefacts and provide synthetic measures related to the examined characteristics. In this paper, we introduce an approach for obtaining raster images starting from source code metrics. With this method, the paper presents some images obtained from different releases of a software product and starts a preliminary discussion on how these images can be useful for underlining interesting features of analyzed code and for improving the software development process. Indeed IE best practices, when applied to source code metrics as proposed, may suggest a way to change or hybridize the classical point of view on code, providing both a way to visualize metric information and alternative approaches to operate on these data. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.