CodeGRITS: A Research Toolkit for Developer Behavior and Eye Tracking in IDE
CodeGRITS is designed for empirical software engineering researchers, especially those interested in studying developers' programming behaviors. It is a plugin for JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ, PyCharm, etc.) that collects developer IDE interactions and eye-tracking data, and exports them into XML files. It also includes several practical features such as screen recording, dynamic configuration, and activity labeling.
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We prepare the artifact via VirtualBox VM image (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS). The VM has 8GB of base memory and 4 CPU cores.
PC should be able to use the VirtualBox to run the VM, and be familiar with the basic operations, e.g., open the terminal, use some basic commands like cd. No other special technology skills are required, but the PC who is familiar with IntelliJ IDEA (or other JetBrains IDEs) is strongly recommended.
CodeGRITS can use the mouse to simulate the eye tracker, and it is difficult to set up a real eye tracker in the virtual machine due to inaccurate calibration. Thus, it is not required to have a real eye tracker. We also believe it would not affect the evaluation results.