Refactoring Debt: Myth or Reality? An Exploratory Study on the Relationship between Technical Debt and Refactoring

Anthony Peruma, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Christian D. Newman, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Ali Ouni

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

    5 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    To meet project timelines or budget constraints, developers intentionally deviate from writing optimal code to feasible code in what is known as incurring Technical Debt (TD). Furthermore, as part of planning their correction, developers document these deficiencies as comments in the code (i.e., self-admitted technical debt or SATD). As a means of improving source code quality, developers often apply a series of refactoring operations to their codebase. In this study, we explore developers repaying this debt through refactoring operations by examining occurrences of SATD removal in the code of 76 open-source Java systems. Our findings show that TD payment usually occurs with refactoring activities and developers refactor their code to remove TD for specific reasons. We envision our findings supporting vendors in providing tools to better support developers in the automatic repayment of technical debt.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings - 2022 Mining Software Repositories Conference, MSR 2022
    Pages127-131
    Number of pages5
    ISBN (Electronic)9781450393034
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2022
    Event2022 Mining Software Repositories Conference, MSR 2022 - Pittsburgh, United States
    Duration: 23 May 202224 May 2022

    Publication series

    NameProceedings - 2022 Mining Software Repositories Conference, MSR 2022

    Conference

    Conference2022 Mining Software Repositories Conference, MSR 2022
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CityPittsburgh
    Period23/05/2224/05/22

    Keywords

    • Mining Software Repositories
    • Refactoring
    • Self Admitted Technical Debt
    • Technical Debt

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