Identifying clones in the Linux kernel

Large multi-platform software systems are likely to encompass hardware-dependent code or sub-systems. However, analyzing multi-platform source code is challenging, due to the variety of supported configurations. Often, the system was originally developed for a single platform, and then new target platforms were added. This practice promotes the presence of duplicated code, also called "cloned" code. The paper presents the clone percentage of a multi-platform-multi-million lines of code, Linux kernel version 2.4.0, detected with a metric-based approach. After a brief description of the procedure followed for code analysis and clone identification, the obtained results are commented upon.