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 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 in time. On average, 30% of the performed refactorings do not reach the Version Control System.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Antoniol, G., Penta, M.D., Merlo, E.: An automatic approach to identify class evolution discontinuities. In: IWPSE (2004)
Bansiya, J.: Evaluating application framework architecture structural and functional stability. In: Object-Oriented Application Frameworks: Problems and Perspectives (1999)
Beck, K., Andres, C.: Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley Professional (2004)
Demeyer, S., Ducasse, S., Nierstrasz, O.: Finding refactorings via change metrics. In: OOPSLA (2000)
Dig, D., Johnson, R.: The role of refactorings in API evolution. In: ICSM (2005)
Dig, D., Comertoglu, C., Marinov, D., Johnson, R.: Automated detection of refactorings in evolving components. In: Thomas, D. (ed.) ECOOP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4067, pp. 404–428. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Dig, D., Johnson, R.: How do APIs evolve? a story of refactoring. Journal of Soft. Maint. and Evol.: Research and Practice (2006)
Eick, S.G., Graves, T.L., Karr, A.F., Marron, J.S., Mockus, A.: Does code decay? assessing the evidence from change management data. IEEE TSE (2001)
Foster, S., Griswold, W.G., Lerner, S.: WitchDoctor: IDE Support for Real-Time Auto-Completion of Refactorings. In: ICSE (2012)
Fowler, M.: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc. (1999)
Gall, H., Hajek, K., Jazayeri, M.: Detection of logical coupling based on product release history. In: ICSM (1998)
Gall, H., Jazayeri, M., Klsch, R.R., Trausmuth, G.: Software evolution observations based on product release history. In: ICSM (1997)
Gall, H., Jazayeri, M., Krajewski, J.: CVS release history data for detecting logical couplings. In: IWMPSE (2003)
Ge, X., DuBose, Q.L., Murphy-Hill, E.: Reconciling manual and automatic refactoring. In: ICSE (2012)
Godfrey, M.W., Zou, L.: Using origin analysis to detect merging and splitting of source code entities. IEEE TSE (2005)
Henkel, J., Diwan, A.: CatchUp!: Capturing and replaying refactorings to support API evolution. In: ICSE (2005)
Kim, M., Cai, D., Kim, S.: An empirical investigation into the role of API-level refactorings during software evolution. In: ICSE (2011)
Kim, M., Zimmermann, T., Nagappan, N.: A field study of refactoring challenges and benefits. In: FSE (2012)
Kim, S., Pan, K., Whitehead Jr., E.J.: When functions change their names: Automatic detection of origin relationships. In: WCRE (2005)
Lehman, M.M., Belady, L.A. (eds.): Program evolution: processes of software change. Academic Press Professional, Inc. (1985)
Mattson, M., Bosch, J.: Frameworks as components: a classification of framework evolution. In: NWPER (1998)
Mattson, M., Bosch, J.: Three Evaluation Methods for Object-oriented Frameworks Evolution - Application, Assessment and Comparison. Tech. rep., University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, Sweden (1999)
Murphy, G.C., Kersten, M., Findlater, L.: How Are Java Software Developers Using the Eclipse IDE? IEEE Software (2006)
Murphy-Hill, E., Black, A.P.: Breaking the barriers to successful refactoring: observations and tools for extract method. In: ICSE (2008)
Murphy-Hill, E., Parnin, C., Black, A.P.: How we refactor, and how we know it. IEEE TSE (2012)
Negara, S., Chen, N., Vakilian, M., Johnson, R.E., Dig, D.: Using Continuous Code Change Analysis to Understand the Practice of Refactoring. Tech. Rep. (2012), http://hdl.handle.net/2142/33783
Negara, S., Vakilian, M., Chen, N., Johnson, R.E., Dig, D.: Is it dangerous to use version control histories to study source code evolution? In: Noble, J. (ed.) ECOOP 2012. LNCS, vol. 7313, pp. 79–103. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Prete, K., Rachatasumrit, N., Sudan, N., Kim, M.: Template-based reconstruction of complex refactorings. In: ICSM (2010)
Rysselberghe, F.V., Demeyer, S.: Reconstruction of successful software evolution using clone detection. In: IWPSE (2003)
Vakilian, M., Chen, N., Moghaddam, R.Z., Negara, S., Johnson, R.E.: A compositional paradigm of automating refactorings. In: Castagna, G. (ed.) ECOOP 2013. LNCS, vol. 7920, pp. 527–551. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Vakilian, M., Chen, N., Negara, S., Rajkumar, B.A., Bailey, B.P., Johnson, R.E.: Use, disuse, and misuse of automated refactorings. In: ICSE (2012)
Weißgerber, P., Diehl, S.: Identifying refactorings from source-code changes. In: ASE (2006)
Xing, E.Z., Stroulia: Refactoring practice: How it is and how it should be supported - an eclipse case study. In: ICSM (2006)
Xing, Z., Stroulia, E.: Analyzing the evolutionary history of the logical design of object-oriented software. TSE (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Negara, S., Chen, N., Vakilian, M., Johnson, R.E., Dig, D. (2013). A Comparative Study of Manual and Automated Refactorings. In: Castagna, G. (eds) ECOOP 2013 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7920. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39038-8_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39038-8_23
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39037-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39038-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)