A Literature Review of Code Clone Analysis to Improve Software Maintenance Process

Abstract

Software systems are getting more complex as the system grows where maintaining such system is a primary concern for the industry. Code clone is one of the factors making software maintenance more difficult. It is a process of replicating code blocks by copy-and-paste that is common in software development. In the beginning stage of the project, developers find it easy and time consuming though it has crucial drawbacks in the long run. There are two types of researchers where some researchers think clones lead to additional changes during maintenance phase, in later stage increase the overall maintenance effort. On the other hand, some researchers think that cloned codes are more stable than non cloned codes. In this study, we discussed Code Clones and different ideas, methods, clone detection tools, related research on code clone, case study.