RTFM (Read the Factual Mails) - Augmenting Program Comprehension with Remail

The advent of globalization has led to the adoption of distributed software development as a common practice. One of its drawbacks-the absence of impromptu meetings-is tackled with other communication means, such as emails, instant messaging, or forums. Mailing lists have proven to be effective for enabling developers' collaboration and coordination: Being asynchronous, emails can evade time zone barriers, being public, mailing lists maintain developers' awareness, being recorded, email archives offer information on system evolution. Emails can provide information about a task, clarify implementation details, or reveal hidden connections among entities, always within the clear context of a discussion. As a result, we argue that emails might help program comprehension. We devised Remail, an Eclipse plug in to integrate email communication in the IDE. It allows developers to seamlessly handle code entities and emails concerning the source code. Discussions relevant to chosen entities can be retrieved easily, thus providing an updated and effective form of complementary documentation. We present design and implementation of Remail, and illustrate, through a number of scenarios, how it can augment program comprehension.