Using Continuous Code Change Analysis to Understand the Practice of Refactoring

Negara, Stas; Chen, Nicholas; Vakilian, Mohsen; Johnson, Ralph E.; Dig, Danny

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/33783 Copy

Description

Title

Using Continuous Code Change Analysis to Understand the Practice of Refactoring

Author(s)

• Negara, Stas
• Chen, Nicholas
• Vakilian, Mohsen
• Johnson, Ralph E.
• Dig, Danny

Issue Date

2012-08-18

Keyword(s)

• refactoring inference
• code evolution
• manual refactoring
• automated refactoring
• practice of refactoring

Abstract

Despite the enormous success that manual and automated refactoring has enjoyed during the last decade, we know little about the practice of refactoring. Understanding the refactoring practice is important for developers, refactoring tool builders, and researchers. Many previous approaches to study refactorings are based on comparing code snapshots, which is imprecise, incomplete, and does not allow answering research questions that involve time or compare manual and automated refactoring. We present the first extended empirical study that considers both manual and automated refactoring. This study is enabled by our algorithm, which infers refactorings from continuous changes. We implemented and applied this algorithm to the code evolution data collected from 23 developers working in their natural environment for 1,520 hours. Using a corpus of 5,371 refactorings, we reveal several new facts about manual and automated refactorings. For example, more than a half of the refactorings were performed manually. The popularity of automated and manual refactorings differs. More than one third of the refactorings performed by developers are clustered. For some refactoring kinds, up to 64% of performed refactorings do not reach the Version Control System.

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/33783

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