Software Design X-Rays

Refactor Your Package Structure

Our previous example was a file-level refactoring, but a code age analysis lets us use the same principle to align package structures with how the code evolves. To illustrate the idea we turn to a codebase with a rich history: the Python programming language.^[58] We use the same basic age data as we saw earlier in this chapter, so either clone the Python repository and generate the code age data or follow along in the prepared analysis results.^[59]

The Python repository has a history that goes 25 years back, which makes this wonderful language about as old as some of humanity’s other great achievements, namely the Hubble space telescope and MTV’s Unplugged broadcasts. You won’t need that much data to detect trends ...