AntiCopyPaster

AntiCopyPaster is a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA that tracks the copying and pasting carried out by the developer and suggests extracting duplicates into a new method as soon as they are introduced in the code.

Important: Please note that AntiCopyPaster is a prototype and a work in progress. We would appreciate any feedback on the concept itself, as well as the implementation.

How to install

AntiCopyPaster requires IntelliJ IDEA of version 2021.3 to work. To install the plugin:

1. Download the pre-built version of the plugin from here;
2. Open IntelliJ IDEA and go to File/Settings/Plugins;
3. Select the gear icon, and choose Install Plugin from Disk...;
4. Choose the downloaded ZIP archive;
5. Click Apply;
6. Restart the IDE.

How it works

The plugin monitors the copying and pasting that takes place inside the IDE. As soon as a code fragment is pasted, the plugin checks if it introduces code duplication, and if it does, the plugin calculates a set of code metrics for it, and a pre-installed CNN model makes a decision whether this piece of code is suitable for Extract Method refactoring. If it is, the plugin suggests the developer to perform the Extract Method refactoring and applies the refactoring if necessary.

The scripts and tools that were used for data gathering and model training could be found here.

Contacts

If you have any questions or propositions, do not hesitate to contact Yaroslav Golubev at [email protected].