Sando: An Extensible Local Code Search Framework

Sando

David ShepherdKostadin DamevskiBartosz RopskiThomas Fritz

An Extensible Local Code Search Framework

Motivation: Search Support Needed

• 40/48 maintenance tasks begin with search

• “Finding initial focus points” as 1 of 4 categories

• 9/12 searched in first 12 steps

[ko et al. ‘06]

[shepherd et al. ‘12]

[sillito et al. ‘06]

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll useregular expressions."  Now they have two problems. -Jamie Zawinski

<Video of searching…>

Motivation: Better Search Support Needed

• Multi-word queries difficult

• Ranking non-existent

• Fails on inexact matches

Our Answer: Sando Search Tool

• Handles Multi-word queries

• Ranks results

• Handles inexact matches

We leveraged state-of-the-art research to create Sando, a local code search tool for Visual Studio

DemoSearching with Sando

Motivation: Search Platform

Need for open source implementation(s)…

Let’s make our implementations available to other researchers!

index

C# parserdocumentcreation

splitter

Sando: Extensible Framework

Investigate your favorite sub-taskReuse our field-tested supporting code

Sando: Extensible Framework

Search a new language

Try a better splitter

Change query weights or search

terms

Rank search results according to any arbitrary

scheme

Investigate your favorite sub-taskReuse our field-tested supporting code

DemoExpanding Queries

Conclusion

• Sando is a free, open source code search tool

• Sando not a regex search, avoiding many pitfalls

• Iteratively refine ideas on real code, real users with Sando

What About TraceLab?

Complementary! TraceLab focuses on lab studies, Sando on user studies.

Screen Capture 11/8/2012