@conference {German:2006:UEA:1137983.1138020, title = {Using evolutionary annotations from change logs to enhance program comprehension}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories}, series = {MSR {\textquoteright}06}, year = {2006}, pages = {159{\textendash}162}, publisher = {ACM}, organization = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, abstract = {Evolutionary annotations are descriptions of how source code evolves over time. Typical source comments, given their static nature, are usually inadequate for describing how a program has evolved over time; instead, source code comments are typically a description of what a program currently does. We propose the use of evolutionary annotations as a way of describing the rationale behind changes applied to a given program (for example "These lines were added to ..."). Evolutionary annotations can assist a software developer in the understanding of how a given portion of source code works by showing him how the source has evolved into its current form.In this paper we describe a method to automatically create evolutionary annotations from change logs, defect tracking systems and mailing lists. We describe the design of a prototype for Eclipse that can filter and present these annotations alongside their corresponding source code and in workbench views. We use Apache as a test case to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.}, keywords = {annotations, apache, bug tracking, change history, eclipse, evolutionary, log files, mailing lists, mining software repositories, software evolution, version control}, isbn = {1-59593-397-2}, doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1137983.1138020}, url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1137983.1138020}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/159UsingEvolutionary.pdf}, author = {Daniel M. German and Peter C. Rigby and Storey, Margaret-Anne} }