Increasing the Trust in Refactoring through Visualization

Alex Bogart, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Ali Ouni

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    6 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    In software development, maintaining good design is essential. The process of refactoring enables developers to improve this design during development without altering the program's existing behavior. However, this process can be time-consuming, introduce semantic errors, and be difficult for developers inexperienced with refactoring or unfamiliar with a given code base. Automated refactoring tools can help not only by applying these changes, but by identifying opportunities for refactoring. Yet, developers have not been quick to adopt these tools due to a lack of trust between the developer and the tool. We propose an approach in the form of a visualization to aid developers in understanding these suggested operations and increasing familiarity with automated refactoring tools. We also provide a manual validation of this approach and identify options to continue experimentation.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings - 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, ICSEW 2020
    Pages334-341
    Number of pages8
    ISBN (Electronic)9781450379632
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 27 Jun 2020
    Event42nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, ICSEW 2020 - Seoul, Korea, Republic of
    Duration: 27 Jun 202019 Jul 2020

    Publication series

    NameProceedings - 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, ICSEW 2020

    Conference

    Conference42nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, ICSEW 2020
    Country/TerritoryKorea, Republic of
    CitySeoul
    Period27/06/2019/07/20

    Keywords

    • Refactoring
    • Software maintenance and evolution
    • Visualization

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