Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
missed patches
software variants
clone-and-own
patch propagation
software maintenance
MOVis: A Visual Analytics Tool for Surfacing Missed Patches Across Software Variants
🤖 AI Summary
This work addresses the challenge of inconsistent maintenance and latent defects in “clone-and-own” software development, where critical patches are often omitted across variants. To tackle this issue, we propose MOVis—a lightweight, interactive desktop tool that, for the first time, employs a structurally aligned dual-panel view to visualize missing patches between source and target variants. By integrating code block alignment, difference highlighting, and patch categorization based on PaReco, MOVis clearly delineates reusable regions and migration-blocking discrepancies. Evaluated in real-world software ecosystems, MOVis significantly enhances the efficiency of cross-variant patch migration. The tool, along with its replication package and demonstration video, has been publicly released to support adoption and reproducibility.
📝 Abstract
Clone-and-own development produces families of related software variants that evolve independently. As variants diverge, important fixes applied in one repository are often missing in others. PaReco has shown that thousands of such missed opportunity (MO) patches exist across real ecosystems, yet its textual output provides limited support for understanding where and how these fixes should be propagated. We present MOVis, a lightweight, interactive desktop tool that visualizes MO patches between a source and target variant. MOVis loads PaReco's MO classifications and presents patched and buggy hunks side-by-side, highlighting corresponding regions and exposing structural differences that hinder reuse. This design enables developers to quickly locate missed fixes, understand required adaptations, and more efficiently maintain consistency across software variants. The tool, replication package, and demonstration video are available at https://zenodo.org/records/18356553 and https://youtu.be/Ac-gjBxHJ3Y.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
visual analytics
missed patches
software variants
clone-and-own
patch propagation
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