Snippet Open-Source Specification Synopsis

Abstract

Snippet is a collaborative source code auditing tool developed by Sandia National Laboratories, in conjunction with researchers from other government agencies and partners. As a tool for use by groups of auditors, Snippet showed the value of providing in-line annotations that captured the thoughts of auditors in such a way that teams of auditors could share their insights. Snippet users found that the annotation mechanisms improved the auditing process but were frustrated at having to learn another environment. To address this issue, collaborators made extensions to existing Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) to incorporate functionality that mimics Snippet's behaviors. This document is one of a pair of documents. The other document, "Snippet Open-Source Specification", goes into details about the history and reasoning behind the requirements made in this document. That document provides for a broader understanding of the motivations backing this document. This document provides the complete specification for collaborative annotation, and a characterization of each specification as required or recommended. Tools that implement these specifications will be considered Snippet compliant. The intent is that complete implementation of these specifications will enable seamless sharing of annotation information between disjoint tools.