As part of the CodeCaterpillar research project at University of Bonn, Computer Science Department III a variety of features were implemented. In the following we will introduce a few of them.

In source code navigation developers memorizes navigation features for orientation even if they are hardly aware of it. Furthermore, a majority of development time is spent on code navigation. We propose a novel visualization of source code indentation to provide additional landmarks for orientation. This visualization uses the human perception of landmarks in natural landscapes as orientation objects.

The view visualises this mountain outline of indentation and code for each file that the developer is currently working on.

The view can be used to analyze and track test-driven development (TDD). A typical cycle of TDD events is writing a failing test first (red), writing as less code as needed to make the test pass (green) and then refactor the code (blue). Those are visualised on a timeline with spikes depending on the current state in Eclipse.

The view is based on the nice visualization available in the project Pulse by @iamhappyprog. It extends the original project by fully using the CodeCaterpillar Publish/Subscribe mechanism to publish the states to all interested listeners. Furthermore, it experimentally allows “tagging” part of the timeline with names to support programming in a public setting.