When people talk about doing "good software deign", they often refer to developing a design that consists of units (or "modules" or "classes") that are as "independent" as possible. There must be some amount of dependence between the units otherwise the result would be disconnected, and so not able to function as a system. The trick is figuring out how to identify units that are as independent as possible, keeping only the necessary dependencies. The problem is, when writing code, one tends to lose track of what exactly the code being written depends on. Maybe it would help to get information as the code is being written as to what dependencies it has. The goal of this project is to develop a tool to do that.
In order for the tool to be real-time, it must be part of an IDE. Eclipse will be the IDE of choice for this project. Eclipse is written in Java, so it will be simpler if the support is for Java code. The basic idea is to develop a plug-in for Eclipse that will provide feedback (e.g. with pop-ups, icons, decorations, etc) to the coder indicating what dependencies (and possibly what kinds of dependencies) the coder is creating to other parts of the system.
Undergraduate
Eclipse plug-in.
Team members must be SOFTENG students
Lab allocations have not been finalised