Towards a better understanding of the mechanics of refactoring detection tools

被引：0

作者：

Oliveira, Jonhnanthan ^{[1
]}

Gheyi, Rohit ^{[1
]}

Teixeira, Leopoldo ^{[2
]}

Ribeiro, Marcio ^{[3
]}

Leandro, Osmar ^{[1
]}

Fonseca, Baldoino ^{[3
]}

机构：

[1] Univ Fed Campina Grande, Campina Grande, Brazil

[2] Univ Fed Pernambuco, Pernambuco, Brazil

[3] Univ Fed Alagoas, Alagoas, Brazil

来源：

INFORMATION AND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY | 2023年 / 162卷

关键词：

Refactoring; Mechanics; Program comprehension;

D O I：

10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107273

中图分类号：

TP [自动化技术、计算机技术];

学科分类号：

0812 ;

摘要：

Context: Refactoring is a crucial practice used by many developers, available in popular IDEs, like Eclipse. Moreover, refactoring detection tools, such as RefDiff and RefactoringMiner, help improve the comprehension of refactoring application changes.Objective: In this article, we better understand to what extent refactoring detection tools (RefDiff and RefactoringMiner) identify refactoring operations that developers apply in practice.Methods: We survey with 53 developers of popular Java projects on GitHub. We asked them to identify six refactoring transformations applied to small programs.Results: There is no unanimity in all questions of our survey. Refactoring detection tools do not detect many refactoring operations expected by developers. In 4 out of 6 questions, most developers prefer the Eclipse refactoring mechanics.Conclusion: The results highlight the importance of diving deep into the refactoring mechanics and defining a baseline. Empirical studies focused on mining refactoring operations may be limited by an incomplete or unrepresentative sample of such operations, thus posing a challenge for researchers in this field.

引用

页数：4

共 10 条

[1]

Fowler M., 1999, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

[2]

Kim M., 2012, 20 FSE

[3] An Empirical Study of RefactoringChallenges and Benefits at Microsoft [J].