  Co-change candidates are the group of code fragments that require a change if
any of these fragments experience a modification in a commit operation during
software evolution. The cloned co-change candidates are a subset of the
co-change candidates, and the members in this subset are clones of one another.
The cloned co-change candidates are usually created by reusing existing code
fragments in a software system. Detecting cloned co-change candidates is
essential for clone-tracking, and studies have shown that we can use clone
detection tools to find cloned co-change candidates. However, although several
studies evaluate clone detection tools for their accuracy in detecting cloned
fragments, we found no study that evaluates clone detection tools for detecting
cloned co-change candidates. In this study, we explore the dimension of code
clone research for detecting cloned co-change candidates. We compare the
performance of 12 different configurations of nine promising clone detection
tools in identifying cloned co-change candidates from eight open-source C and
Java-based subject systems of various sizes and application domains. A ranked
list and analysis of the results provides valuable insights and guidelines into
selecting and configuring a clone detection tool for identifying co-change
candidates and leads to a new dimension of code clone research into change
impact analysis.
