Evolution Patterns
Document Actions
This research topic focuses on software change propagation, using software evolution analyses. It is supported by several approaches and tools.
AURA
AURA is a tool to identify framework evolution. It combines call-dependency and text similarity analyses in a multi-iteration algorithm to detect change rules from old versions to new versions of a program. It is able to automatically generate one-to-one, many-to-one, one-to-many and simply-deleted rules.
AURA includes two components: AURA Model Builder: It converts the source code of the old version and the new version of a program to a language-independent model (AURA Model), used by AURA Rule
Generator to identify the change rules. The current version of AURA Model Builder is an Eclipse plugin. AURA Rule Generator: It generates change rules according to AURA Model. It can be used both as an Eclipse plugin and as a standalone java program.
System Requirement
- JRE 1.6
- Eclipse 3.5
Installation
Please see the download page to access the following files:
- Eclipse Plugin: Download AURA-plugin.zip and extract it to the Eclipse directory, then restart Eclipse.
- Standalone Rule Generator: Download AURA-RuleGenerator.zip and extract it to the directory where it supposed to be installed.
Usage
1. Create AURA task config file:
Build AURA Task Config File as an xml file with the following content:
<configurations>
<!-- The directory where the analysis result is saved -->
<workingDirectory>D:\MIneSweeperTest\jEdit\</workingDirectory>
<!-- The name of the old version project of Eclipse of the program to be analyzed -->
<!-- It must be in the current workspace -->
<oldVersionProject>jEdit_4.1</oldVersionProject>
<!-- Reserved field, Don't change -->
<oldVersionWihtNewFramework></oldVersionWihtNewFramework>
<!-- The name of the new version project of Eclipse of the program to be analyzed -->
<!-- It must be in the current workspace -->
<newVersionProject>jEdit_4.2</newVersionProject>
<!-- Reserved field, Don't change -->
<operation>modelBuilding</operation>
</configurations>
2. Set proper maximum heap size:
Depends on the size of the program to be analyzed,
we need to set the heap sized of Java VM to proper value. Here are the
values of heap size used during our evaluation:
-Xmx8000m for org.eclipse.jdt.core and org.eclipse.jdt.ui
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.201.R35x_v20090715.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.0.200.v20090519
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
-vmargs
-Xms1096m
-Xmx1096m
3. Analyze frameworks:
To analyze medium or samll programs such as Struts 1.1 and 1.2.4, it only takes a couple of minutes. We recommend to run Eclipse plugin version of AURA to perform both model building and change rule generating in the following steps:
Start Eclipse, click on menu AURA->Run All,
choose AURA Task Config File to build models and to generate change
rules.
To analyze large programs such as org.eclipse.jdt.core and org.eclipse.jdt.ui,
it takes a couple of hours. So it is better to build AURA models with
Eclipse plugin version, than run standalone AURA Rule Generator on a
high-performance server as a background process.
Start Eclipse, click on menu AURA->Build Old
Model, choose AURA Task Config File to build the old version model.
Repeat the the same operations with menu AURA->Build Old Model to build the new version model.
Run AURARuleGenerator.bat (on Windows) or
AURARuleGenerator.sh (on Linux) in AURARuleGenerator directory with
three parameters: working-dir old-version-AURA-model.xml
new-version-AURA-model.xml to generate change rules.
4. Consult change rules:
The change rules are generated in two formats: plain
text (.txt) and XML (.xml). The former is readable for human, the
latter is supposed to be used by further automatic analyses. The
description of the generated files:
| Description |
File Name (with .txt and .xml) |
| Complete change rule file | rules_Old-Version_New-version_Date |
| Abridged complete change rule file (without package names in return value and parameters): |
rules_Old-Version_New-version_Date_abridged_Date |
| The rules generated after X iterations of step 4a | rules_iter_NoX_Old-Version_New-version_Date |
| The rules generated after step 4b | x-to-many_rules_Old-Version_New-version_Date |
| The rules generated after step 4c | rules_by_nameinvocOld-Version_New-version_Date |
| The rules generated after step 5 | rules_by_name_def_Old-Version_New-version_Date |
Uninstallation
AURA can be deleted clearly without any leftover on your system.
- Eclipse plugin: Delete AURA_*.jar from Eclipse plugins directory.
- Standalone Rule Generator: Delete AURARuleGenerator.jar, AURARuleGenerator.bat and AURARuleGenerator.sh.
