FaultBuster: An automatic code smell refactoring toolset

Designing and Developing Automated Refactoring Transformations: An Experience Report

“…We asked the developers to provide detailed documentation of each refactoring, and explain the main reasons and the steps of how they improved the code fragment in question. In the second stage (Design & Development), we designed and implemented a refactoring framework [15] based on the results of the manual refactorings. This framework was implemented as a server-side component that provided three types of services:…”

“…Later, in the automatic refactoring phase, we found that developers tend to have a different behavior when they use automatic tools (e.g., they accept a solution recommended by the tool even if manually they would probably do something else), so we examined the automatic transformations as well [14]. In a recent tool demo paper [15], we described the architecture of the tools developed in the project.…”

Empirical Evaluation of the Energy Impact of Refactoring Code Smells

“…Refactoring activities are typically aimed at removing code smells [18], that can be defined as "certain structures in the code that indicate violation of fundamental design principles and negatively impact design quality" [43]. Detection and refactoring of some code smells can be automated by using special-purpose tools, among which the Eclipse plugin JDeodorant [14] results to be the one which is most commonly utilized [44].…”

How Does Refactoring Affect Internal Quality Attributes?: A Multi-Project Study

“…Similarly to the study with refactoring operations, we investigate whether re-refactoring operations tend to improve, worsen, or keep unaffected the internal quality attributes. Inspired by previous work (27), we refer to re-refactoring operation as any refactoring operation applied on a code element anytime after other refactoring operations being applied on the same code element. The re-refactoring operations may occur in two situations: exactly in the same commit affected by the previous refactoring operation; or in a different commit, which is either the next or a more distant commit in the evolution of the project.…”

“…Due to the lack of empirical evidence of the effects of re-refactoring operations on internal quality attributes, it could be interesting the study these operations, which previous work suggest to have a potential to support the maintenance of software projects (28). In fact, recent studies (29,27) assume that re-refactoring could provide several benefits, such as the improve the code structural quality and prevent the decay of the project quality as a whole. Our goal is to confirm or refute these assumptions.…”