Linking Sketches and Diagrams to Source Code Artifacts

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that sketches and diagrams play an important role in the daily work of software developers. If these visual artifacts are archived, they are often detached from the source code they document, because there is no adequate tool support to assist developers in capturing, archiving, and retrieving sketches related to certain source code artifacts. This paper presents SketchLink, a tool that aims at increasing the value of sketches and diagrams created during software development by supporting developers in these tasks. Our prototype implementation provides a web application that employs the camera of smartphones and tablets to capture analog sketches, but can also be used on desktop computers to upload, for instance, computer-generated diagrams. We also implemented a plugin for a Java IDE that embeds the links in Javadoc comments and visualizes them in situ in the source code editor as graphical icons.