Complex code querying and navigation for AspectJ

  • Authors:
  • J.-Hendrik Pfeiffer;Andonis Sardos;John R. Gurd

  • Affiliations:
  • The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK;The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK;The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

  • Venue:
  • eclipse '05 Proceedings of the 2005 OOPSLA workshop on Eclipse technology eXchange
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

The ever growing size and complexity of software projects demand good IDE support in order to assist the understanding and navigation of source code during implementation and maintenance. In the case of Aspect-oriented programming, additional supporting IDE tools are needed to make aspect-oriented structures explicit. However, existing tools struggle to provide easy-to-use navigation facilities when the size of the source code increases.This paper describes Lost a query and navigation tool for the AspectJ language, its integration with the eclipse IDE, and initial experiences with using the tool. The described tool not only provides features which are novel with respect to current aspect-oriented programming tools but also attempts to overcome deficiencies of existing code querying tools.Additionally, we briefly discuss the implementation of a framework for code querying tools, which was created in order to maintain high flexibility in implementing the code querying tool presented here.