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The buggy side of code refactoring: understanding the relationship between refactorings and bugs

Authors:

Rafael de MelloAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceeedings

Pages 406 - 407

https://doi.org/10.1145/3183440.3195030

Published: 27 May 2018 Publication History

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Abstract

Code refactoring is widely practiced by software developers. There is an explicit assumption that code refactoring improves the structural quality of a software project, thereby also reducing its bug proneness. However, refactoring is often applied with different purposes in practice. Depending on the complexity of certain refactorings, developers might unconsciously make the source code more susceptible to have bugs. In this paper, we present a longitudinal study of 5 Java open source projects, where 20,689 refactorings, and 1,033 bug reports were analyzed. We found that many bugs are introduced in the refactored code as soon as the first immediate change is made on it. Furthermore, code elements affected by refactorings performed in conjunction with other changes are more prone to have bugs than those affected by pure refactorings.

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Cited By

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Alexiou MMertoguno J(2023)Automated Binary Program Partitioning through Structural Analysis2023 14th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems & Applications (IISA)10.1109/IISA59645.2023.10345849(1-7)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/IISA59645.2023.10345849
Bibiano AUchôa AAssunção WTenório DColanzi TVergilio SGarcia A(2023)Composite refactoringInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107134156:COnline publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107134
Muse BKhomh FAntoniol G(2023)Refactoring practices in the context of data-intensive systemsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10271-x28:2Online publication date: 16-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10271-x
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The buggy side of code refactoring: understanding the relationship between refactorings and bugs

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Published In

ICSE '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceeedings

May 2018

231 pages

ISBN:9781450356633

DOI:10.1145/3183440

Conference Chair:
Michel Chaudron
Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
,
General Chair:
Ivica Crnkovic
Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
,
Program Chairs:
Marsha Chechik
University of Toronto, Canada
,
Mark Harman
Facebook and University College London, United Kingdom

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 May 2018

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Poster

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CAPES/Procad
FAPERJ
CNPq

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ICSE '18

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS

ICSE '18: 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 27 - June 3, 2018

Gothenburg, Sweden

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Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

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Alexiou MMertoguno J(2023)Automated Binary Program Partitioning through Structural Analysis2023 14th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems & Applications (IISA)10.1109/IISA59645.2023.10345849(1-7)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/IISA59645.2023.10345849
Bibiano AUchôa AAssunção WTenório DColanzi TVergilio SGarcia A(2023)Composite refactoringInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107134156:COnline publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107134
Muse BKhomh FAntoniol G(2023)Refactoring practices in the context of data-intensive systemsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10271-x28:2Online publication date: 16-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10271-x
Counsell SNowack VHall TBowes DHaraldsson SWinter EWoodward J(2022)An 80-20 Analysis of Buggy and Non-buggy Refactorings in Open-Source Commits2022 48th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)10.1109/SEAA56994.2022.00038(197-200)Online publication date: Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SEAA56994.2022.00038
Muse BKhomh FAntoniol G(2022)Do Developers Refactor Data Access Code? An Empirical Study2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00014(25-35)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00014
Tang YKhatchadourian RBagherzadeh MSingh RStewart ARaja A(2021)An Empirical Study of Refactorings and Technical Debt in Machine Learning SystemsProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00033(238-250)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00033
Bibiano AFernandes EOliveira DGarcia AKalinowski MFonseca BOliveira ROliveira ACedrim D(2019)A Quantitative Study on Characteristics and Effect of Batch Refactoring on Code Smells2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870183(1-11)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870183

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