Comprehending an unfamiliar code fragment requires an awareness of explicit usage directives that may be present in the documentation of some invoked functions. Such directives include "do" and "don't do" instructions, or important caveats and issues. Since it is not practical for developers to thoroughly investigate every call, directives may be missed and errors may ensue.
eMoose is a framework that aims to help Java developers identify methods that have associated directives and spot these directives within the documentation text. It currently supports Java developers in Eclipse and is distributed as Eclipse plugins. It can also serve as an alternative or a precursor for documentation.
eMoose maintains a knowledge space consisting of directives that are tagged by users in the javaDocs of their methods, and directives which were tagged for standard apis.
The tool tracks the Java editor, identifies method calls, and decorates those whose targets are associated with directives, offering developers a cue that the method may be worth investigating. When the user hovers over the call, the javadoc hover is augmented with a list of the associated directives.
eMoose was developed as part of the Ph.D. work of Uri Dekel at Carnegie Mellon University.
Note: The source code is currently still hosted at CMU. After the next cleanup and API stabilization, it will be moved for hosting here.
Note: A new and more stable version of eMoose is in the works. If you are interested in evaluating the tool or in access to the source code, please contact me
To learn more about API documentation visibility read more on the importance of directives or see our publications on the usability of API documentation and the effect of eMoose in our publications page, or visit our introduction and user's guide.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not see the list of eMoose features in the Eclipse 'Available Software' dialog, look under the 'Uncategorized' category or uncheck the 'Group items by category' checkbox.
