Reflective feature location: knowledge in mind meets information in system

Locating code entities relevant to a feature (i.e., feature location) is an important task in software maintenance. Feature location is challenging due to the information gap between the developer’s knowledge about a feature and the feature’s implementation in the system. In this paper, we present a reflective feature location approach ReFLex to bridge this gap. ReFLex automatically computes a reflexion model between the developer’s logical view of a feature and the feature’s implemented view reverse-engineered from the code. It provides interactive reflection support for the developer to refine the logical view and the feature location results such that the logical view and the implemented view converge gradually in an iterative feature location process. We have implemented our approach as an Eclipse plugin and investigated the benefits and challenges in reflective feature location through a user study.