Making Program Refactoring Safer

Developers rely on compilation, test suites, and tools to preserve observable behavior during refactoring. However, most refactoring tools don't implement all the preconditions that guarantee refactoring correctness because formally identifying them is cost-prohibitive. Therefore, these tools c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE software Vol. 27; no. 4; pp. 52 - 57
Main Authors: Soares, Gustavo, Gheyi, Rohit, Serey, Dalton, Massoni, Tiago
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Alamitos, CA IEEE 01.07.2010
IEEE Computer Society
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Automatic testing
Automation
Behavior
behavior preservation
Computer programs
Computer science; control theory; systems
Developers
Exact sciences and technology
Java
Methods
Object oriented programming
Preserves
Quality control
refactoring
Safety
Software
Software engineering
Test methods
Transformations
unit testing
Software development
Refactoring
ISSN:0740-7459, 1937-4194
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Developers rely on compilation, test suites, and tools to preserve observable behavior during refactoring. However, most refactoring tools don't implement all the preconditions that guarantee refactoring correctness because formally identifying them is cost-prohibitive. Therefore, these tools could perform nonbehavior-preserving transformations. The authors present a tool for improving safety during refactoring that automatically generates a test suite suited for detecting behavioral changes. They used this tool to evaluate seven real case study refactorings (from 3 to 100 KLOC).
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ISSN:0740-7459
1937-4194
DOI:10.1109/MS.2010.63