DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16020563
title: Visualizing Feature-Oriented Software Evolution - Replication Package

description: EMSE - Replication Package

This repository contains the replication package for our paper "Visualizing Feature-Oriented Software Evolution", published at the Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC) in 2025.

This study has been designed, conducted, and reported by the following reseachers:

- [Kevin Hermann](https://se.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/kevin-hermann/) (Ruhr University Bochum)- [Johan Martinson] (https://se.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/johan-martinson/) (Ruhr University Bochum)- [Thorsten Berger](https://se.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/thorsten-berger/) (Ruhr University Bochum, University of Gothenburg, and Chalmers University of Technology)

Any of the reseachers listed above can be contacted for more information. 

The data supporting the conducted controlled experiment, and our prototype can be found below.

How to cite this work---If this work or the dataset is helping your research and you use it in a publication, please cite it is as follows. Thank you!

```@inproceedings{SPLC2025_VisualizingFose,  title = {{Visualizing Feature-Oriented Software Evolution}},  booktitle = {Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC)},  year = {2025},  author = {Kevin Hermann and Johan Martinson and Thorsten Berger}}```

Tool availability

We integrated our prototype in our tool HAnS-viz. HAnS-viz is publicly availabe at github.com/isselab/HAnS-viz, and its corresponding paper can be found at doi.org/10.1145/3748269.3748487.

Overview of the replication package---This replication package is structured as follows:```    /    .    |--- experiment_questionnaire_group_a.pdf                  The questionnaire used to conduct our controlled experiment for group A including all tasks    |--- experiment_questionnaire_group_b.pdf                  The questionnaire used to conduct our controlled experiment for group B including all tasks    |--- experiment_results_group_a_all_times.csv               The completed questionnaire of participants of group A including all completion times    |--- experiment_results_group_a_correct_times.csv       The completed questionnaire of participants of group A including only completion times of correctly solved tasks    |--- experiment_results_group_b_all_times.csv               The completed questionnaire of participants of group B including all completion times    |--- experiment_results_group_b_correct_times.csv       The completed questionnaire of participants of group B including only completion times of correctly solved tasks    |--- experiment_task_correctness.txt                              Summary of correctly solved tasks for each experiment group```

Please find detailed information about the individual files below.

experiment_questionnaire_group_a.pdf

The file "experiment_questionnaire_group_a.pdf" contains the questionnaire used to conduct our controlled experiment for group A including all tasks. Group A first used the Git CLI to solve the tasks, and then our feature evolution timeline.

experiment_questionnaire_group_b.pdf

The file "experiment_questionnaire_group_b.pdf" contains the questionnaire used to conduct our controlled experiment for group B including all tasks. Group B first used our feature evolution timeline to solve the tasks, and then the Git CLI.

experiment_results_group_a_all_times.csv

The file "experiment_results_group_a_all_times.csv" contains data of the completed questionnaire of all participants from group A. The data comprises the consent we received from each participant, their demographic background, their completion times and answers for each task, and their qualitative feedback. In this version, all completion times are preserved, independently of whether participants correctly solved the task.

experiment_results_group_a_correct_times.csv

The file "experiment_results_group_a_all_times.csv" contains data of the completed questionnaire of all participants from group A. The data comprises the consent we received from each participant, their demographic background, their completion times and answers for each task, and their qualitative feedback. In this version, only completion times are preserved, for correctly solved tasks.

experiment_results_group_b_all_times.csv

The file "experiment_results_group_b_all_times.csv" contains data of the completed questionnaire of all participants from group B. The data comprises the consent we received from each participant, their demographic background, their completion times and answers for each task, and their qualitative feedback. In this version, all completion times are preserved, independently of whether participants correctly solved the task.

experiment_results_group_b_correct_times.csv

The file "experiment_results_group_b_all_times.csv" contains data of the completed questionnaire of all participants from group B. The data comprises the consent we received from each participant, their demographic background, their completion times and answers for each task, and their qualitative feedback. In this version, only completion times are preserved, for correctly solved tasks.

experiment_task_correctness.txt

The file "experiment_task_correctness.txt" contains a summary of correctly solved task for each group and each modality.