research-article

An exploratory study on the relationship between changes and refactoring

Authors:

Andrea De LuciaAuthors Info & Claims

ICPC '17: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension

Pages 176 - 185

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC.2017.38

Published: 20 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Refactoring aims at improving the internal structure of a software system without changing its external behavior. Previous studies empirically assessed, on the one hand, the benefits of refactoring in terms of code quality and developers' productivity, and on the other hand, the underlying reasons that push programmers to apply refactoring. Results achieved in the latter investigations indicate that besides personal motivation such as the responsibility concerned with code authorship, refactoring is mainly performed as a consequence of changes in the requirements rather than driven by software quality. However, these findings have been derived by surveying developers, and therefore no software repository study has been carried out to corroborate the achieved findings. To bridge this gap, we provide a quantitative investigation on the relationship between different types of code changes (i.e., Fault Repairing Modification, Feature Introduction Modification, and General Maintenance Modification) and 28 different refactoring types coming from 3 open source projects. Results showed that developers tend to apply a higher number of refactoring operations aimed at improving maintainability and comprehensibility of the source code when fixing bugs. Instead, when new features are implemented, more complex refactoring operations are performed to improve code cohesion. Most of the times, the underlying reasons behind the application of such refactoring operations are represented by the presence of duplicate code or previously introduced self-admitted technical debts.

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Ksontini EAbid AKhalsi RKessentini MSpinellis DConstantinou EBacchelli A(2024)DRMiner: A Tool For Identifying And Analyzing Refactorings In DockerfileProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3643991.3644921(584-594)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644921
Chowdhury SUddin GHemmati HHolmes R(2024)Method-level Bug Prediction: Problems and PromisesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/364033133:4(1-31)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640331
Pinheiro DBezerra CUchoa A(2022)How do Trivial Refactorings Affect Classification Prediction Models?Proceedings of the 16th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3559712.3559720(81-90)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3559712.3559720
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An exploratory study on the relationship between changes and refactoring
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Machine learning
    1. Learning paradigms
      1. Supervised learning
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICPC '17: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension

May 2017

399 pages

ISBN:9781538605356

General Chair:
Giuseppe Scanniello
University of Basilicata, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
David Lo
Singapore Management University, Singapore
,
Alexander Serebrenik
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society
SADIO: SADIO

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IEEE Press

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Published: 20 May 2017

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ICSE '17: 39th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 20 - 28, 2017

Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Cited By

Ksontini EAbid AKhalsi RKessentini MSpinellis DConstantinou EBacchelli A(2024)DRMiner: A Tool For Identifying And Analyzing Refactorings In DockerfileProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3643991.3644921(584-594)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644921
Chowdhury SUddin GHemmati HHolmes R(2024)Method-level Bug Prediction: Problems and PromisesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/364033133:4(1-31)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640331
Pinheiro DBezerra CUchoa A(2022)How do Trivial Refactorings Affect Classification Prediction Models?Proceedings of the 16th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3559712.3559720(81-90)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3559712.3559720
AlOmar EPeruma AMkaouer MNewman COuni ALo DMcIntosh SNovielli N(2022)An exploratory study on refactoring documentation in issues handlingProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3524842.3528525(107-111)Online publication date: 23-May-2022
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Chowdhury SUddin GHolmes RLo DMcIntosh SNovielli N(2022)An empirical study on maintainable method size in JavaProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3524842.3527975(252-264)Online publication date: 23-May-2022
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Coelho FTsantalis NMassoni TAlves ELanubile F(2021)An Empirical Study on Refactoring-Inducing Pull RequestsProceedings of the 15th ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1145/3475716.3475785(1-12)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2021
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Jiang YLiu HNiu NZhang LHu Y(2021)Extracting Concise Bug-Fixing Patches from Human-Written Patches in Version Control SystemsProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00069(686-698)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
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Wen FNagy CLanza MBavota G(2020)An Empirical Study of Quick Remedy CommitsProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3387904.3389266(60-71)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2020
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Bibiano ASoares VCoutinho DFernandes ECorreia JSantos KOliveira AGarcia AGheyi RFonseca BRibeiro MBarbosa COliveira D(2020)How Does Incomplete Composite Refactoring Affect Internal Quality Attributes?Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3387904.3389264(149-159)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2020
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