Refactoring Practices in the Context of Modern Code Review: An Industrial Case Study at Xerox

Eman Abdullah Alomar, Hussein Alrubaye, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Ali Ouni, Marouane Kessentini

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

    30 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Modern code review is a common and essential practice employed in both industrial and open-source projects to improve software quality, share knowledge, and ensure conformance with coding standards. During code review, developers may inspect and discuss various changes including refactoring activities before merging code changes in the code base. To date, code review has been extensively studied to explore its general challenges, best practices and outcomes, and socio-technical aspects. However, little is known about how refactoring activities are being reviewed, perceived, and practiced. This study aims to reveal insights into how reviewers develop a decision about accepting or rejecting a submitted refactoring request, and what makes such review challenging. We present an industrial case study with 24 professional developers at Xerox. Particularly, we study the motivations, documentation practices, challenges, verification, and implications of refactoring activities during code review. Our study delivers several important findings. Our results report the lack of a proper procedure to follow by developers when documenting their refactorings for review. Our survey with reviewers has also revealed several difficulties related to understanding the refactoring intent and implications on the functional and non-functional aspects of the software. In light of our findings, we recommended a procedure to properly document refactoring activities, as part of our survey feedback.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings - 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering
    Subtitle of host publicationSoftware Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2021
    Pages348-357
    Number of pages10
    ISBN (Electronic)9780738146690
    DOIs
    StatePublished - May 2021
    Event43rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2021 - Virtual, Online, Spain
    Duration: 25 May 202128 May 2021

    Publication series

    NameProceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
    ISSN (Print)0270-5257

    Conference

    Conference43rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2021
    Country/TerritorySpain
    CityVirtual, Online
    Period25/05/2128/05/21

    Keywords

    • Code review
    • Refactoring
    • Software quality

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