StarGate: A Unified, Interactive Visualization of Software Projects

Author

Kwan-Liu Ma

Author_Institution

Univ. of California, Davis

fYear

2008

fDate

5-7 March 2008

Firstpage

191

Lastpage

198

Abstract

With the success of open source software projects, such as Apache and Mozilla, comes the opportunity to study the development process. In this paper, we present StarGate: a novel system for visualizing software projects. Whereas previous software project visualizations concentrated mainly on the source code changes, we literally place the developers in the center of our design. Developers are grouped visually into clusters corresponding to the areas of the file repository they work on the most. Connections are drawn between people who communicate via email. The changes to the repository are also displayed. With StarGate, it is easy to look beyond the source code and see trends in developer activity. The system can be used by anyone interested in the project, but it especially benefits project managers, project novices and software engineering researchers.

Keywords

data visualisation; interactive systems; project management; software management; Apache; Mozilla; StarGate; email; file repository; interactive visualization; open source software projects; software project visualizations; source code; Application software; Computer network management; Control systems; Data visualization; Open source software; Project management; Social network services; Software development management; Software engineering; Technological innovation; Information Visualization; Social Networks; Software Visualization;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Visualization Symposium, 2008. PacificVIS '08. IEEE Pacific

Conference_Location

Kyoto

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1966-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PACIFICVIS.2008.4475476

Filename

4475476