SPCP-Miner: A tool for mining code clones that are important for refactoring or tracking

Code cloning has both positive and negative impacts on software maintenance and evolution. Focusing on the issues related to code cloning, researchers suggest to manage code clones through refactoring and tracking. However, it is impractical to refactor or track all clones in a software system. Thus, it is essential to identify which clones are important for refactoring and also, which clones are important for tracking. In this paper, we present a tool called SPCP-Miner which is the pioneer one to automatically identify and rank the important refactoring as well as important tracking candidates from the whole set of clones in a software system. SPCP-Miner implements the existing techniques that we used to conduct a large scale empirical study on SPCP clones (i.e., the clones that evolved following a Similarity Preserving Change Pattern called SPCP). We believe that SPCP-Miner can help us in better management of code clones by suggesting important clones for refactoring or tracking.