CHIME: customizable hyperlink insertion and maintenance engine for software engineering environments
Prémkumar Dévanbu, Y.-F. Chen, Emden R. Gansner, Hausi A. Müller, Jose Martin · 2003
Source code browsing is an important part of program comprehension. Browsers expose semantic and syntactic relationships (such asbetween object references and de nitions) in GUI-accessible forms. These relationships are derived using tools which perform static analysis on the original software documents. Implementing such browsers is tricky. Program comprehension strategies vary, and it is necessary to provide the right browsing support. Analysis tools to derive the relevant crossreference relationships are often di cult to build. Tools to browse distributed documents require extensive coding for the GUI, as well as for data communications. Therefore, there are powerful motivations for using existing static analysis tools in conjunction with WWW technology to implement browsers for distributed software projects. The chime framework provides a exible, customizable platform for inserting HTML links into software documents using information generated by existing software analysis tools. Using the chime speci cation language, and a simple, retargetable database interface, it is possible to quickly incorporate a range of di erent link insertion tools for software documents, into an existing, legacy software development environment. This enables tool builders to o er customized browsing support with a well-known GUI. This paper describes the chime architecture, and describes our experience with several re-targeting e orts of this system. 1