A methodology to assess the impact of source code flaws in changeability, and its application to clones

Some characteristics of source code are perceived as harmful because they evidence that design principles were not applied in certain parts of the application. This work proposes a methodology that assesses the effect of so called source code flaws in changeability. Our methodology is based on measures and indicators of the effort of changing methods. The measures are calculated with information automatically extracted from source code repositories, being therefore objective. We analyze the effect of clones in methods using the methodology, and we show its potential for better understanding the effect of low level structure in changeability.