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Plug-In Aspect enabled Aspect Browser

• Vadim BokinJonathan Neddenriep

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Motivation / Problem

• Current aspects in Aspect Browser (AB) are
  generated exclusively through text search.
• Programmers would like other means of identifying
  and creating aspects to visualize code.

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Claim

• AB can be modified / extended to allow outside
  aspects to be viewed through the existing
  graphical user interface leveraging the map
  metaphor.

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Proposed Solution

• Create means to add plug-in aspects to AB which
  are based on the file and line number, instead of
  textual mapping.
• Add additional menu items to the AB interface to
  allow outside aspect imports.

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Solution

• Defined an interface, where the plug-in is to
  return the name of the new aspects and all file
  lines associated with it.
• Integrated our PluginManager with ABs Menu class
  to generate new Menu items.
• PluginManager is a ClassLoader that searches
  through specific directories for classes that
  implement our Plug-In Aspect interface.

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Current Uses

• We created 2 Plug-ins
• (1) A flat-file reader where each file is a
• single aspect and has the format
• ltAspectNamegtltcolorgt
• ltFileNamegtltLineNumbergt
• ltFileNamegtltLineNumbergt
• ltFileNamegtltLineNumbergt

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Uses continued

• EXAMPLE
• MainMethodsff00ff
• Abc.java14
• Def.java17
• Ghi.java13

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Uses continued

• (2) RCS (CVS) repository file parser
• As parameter takes in a number of filenames
  and processes their respective repository files
  (that have the name filename,v
• We used CVS during a previous project in cse210
  and now can visually see who actually did all the
  work ? Demo

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Possible Uses

• Current CVS parser replicates basic SeeSoft
  functionality.
• Can be used with Lackwit (types by use)
• Dynamic code profiling output (can show visually
  what code is being executed). Eg jProf

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Lessons learned

• Jumping into the middle of someone elses code
  (AB code) is very difficult.
• We needed to refine the interface between our
  components before we were able to divide up the
  work.
• and most important
• The Map Metaphor is applicable to the information
  extracted from CVS repository
• This shows that there are many applications for
  AB besides text-based search.

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Questions?