This paper describes an ongoing project on automating program maintenance. We present a methodological framework for program maintenance and discuss detailed techniques for specific maintenance tasks. Our research on a methodology for program maintenance covers the whole maintenance life-cycle. The objective of this research is to delimit boundaries for long-term evolution of the project and to define a framework for integrating specific techniques and tools we develop. In this paper, we focus

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... n the methodological aspects of program maintenance. First, we review techniques and tools used during the various phases of program maintenance. We analyze relations among these techniques to see how they can work together within a maintenance methodology. Next, we observe that there can be no universal maintenance methodology, because an optimal maintenance process depends on many factors which are specific to a maintenance problem in hand. We discuss the concept of a framework for the customization of program maintenance methodologies and for supporting them with integrated tools.