Combining Clone Detection and Latent Semantic Indexing to Detect Re-implementations
Veronika Bauer, Tobias Volke, Sebastian Eder · 2016
Semantic redundancies are frequently reported in practice and cause increased efforts for development and maintenance. However, instances are hard to find with existing approaches that tend to deliver a daunting number of imprecise findings for this specific problem. Can these issues be mitigated by combining different detection techniques? In this paper, we investigate whether a combination of clone detection and latent semantic indexing improves the detection of candidate re-implementations. We evaluate the combination of both techniques on an industrial system, assess the results of both techniques, characterize the different findings, and present a practitioner judgement of their relevance. Our findings suggest that (1) latent semantic indexing and clone detection complement each other, (2) aggregated clone detection can be a better indicator for re-implementations than LSI, and (3) the combination of the techniques provides high quality result sets which were considered relevant and actionable by practitioners.