Comparative Stability of Cloned and Non-cloned Code: A Replication Study
This incremental work addresses contradictory claims about code cloning's effects on software maintenance and stability for software engineers.
The study replicated a previous investigation on code cloning's impact on software stability, applying the same stability measurement techniques to a different C programming language system to assess generalizability and validate earlier findings.
Code cloning is an important software engineering aspect. It is a common software reuse principle that consists of duplicating source code within a program or across different systems owned or maintained by the same entity. There are several contradictory claims concerning the impact of cloning on software stability and maintenance effort. Some papers state that cloning is desired since it speeds up the development process and helps stakeholders meet the tight schedule and deliver on time. Other papers argue that code clone leads to code bloat and causes increase software maintenance costs due to copied defects and dead code. In this paper, we are replicating a previous study done on cloning by the original author. We are repeating his work using the same methods and metrics but with different subjects and experimenters. The paper we are addressing evaluates the impact of code cloning on code stability using three different stability-measuring methods. Our team will apply the same stability measurement techniques on a different software system developed in C programming language to determine generalizability, assure that the results are reliable, validate their outcomes, and to inspire new search by combining previous findings from related studies.