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International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering

ENASE 2018: Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering pp 334–351Cite as

Automated Multi-objective Refactoring Based on Quality and Code Element Recentness

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1023))

Abstract

Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) has been used to automate various aspects of the software development cycle. One particular case is refactoring, especially to improve software quality. However, often there are other factors that influence the refactoring process. One such factor, the recentness of the code elements, is identified in this paper as important. The paper describes the use of a multi-objective genetic algorithm to automate software refactoring based on a metric function for software quality and a second objective to measure the recentness of the code elements being refactored. The recentness measure is calculated from data on previous versions of the software. The multi-objective setup refactors the input program to improve its quality using the quality objective, while also focusing on the recentness of the code elements inspected. The approach is implemented in a tool, MultiRefactor and validated using a set of six open source Java programs. An experiment is described that compares the multi-objective approach against an alternative mono-objective approach that uses only the quality function. The results show that the multi-objective approach gives significantly better recentness scores without greatly degrading improvements in the quality score.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/mmohan01/MultiRefactor.

  2. 2.

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/recoder.

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Acknowledgements

The research for this paper contributes to a PhD project funded by the EPSRC grant EP/M506400/1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK

    Michael Mohan & Des Greer

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  1. Michael Mohan
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  2. Des Greer
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Correspondence to Des Greer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Ernesto Damiani

  2. City University London, London, UK

    George Spanoudakis

  3. Wrocław University of Economics, Wroclaw, Poland

    Leszek A. Maciaszek

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Mohan, M., Greer, D. (2019). Automated Multi-objective Refactoring Based on Quality and Code Element Recentness. In: Damiani, E., Spanoudakis, G., Maciaszek, L. (eds) Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering. ENASE 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1023. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22559-9_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22559-9_15

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