Authors:
Raúl Marticorena
1
;
Carlos López
1
;
Javier Pérez
2
and
Yania Crespo
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Burgos, Spain
;
2
University of Valladolid, Spain
Keyword(s):
Refactoring tools, Characterization, IDE, Object-oriented programming.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
;
Software Testing and Maintenance
Abstract:
Tool support for refactoring is widespread nowadays. The most widely known IDEs include refactoring support, and many refactoring-specific tools are also available. Developers are aware of refactoring activities and they do refactor their applications even manually or in an assisted way.
For the users of refactoring tools, the current state of the art is well documented in refactoring catalogs, where objectives, motivation, mechanisms, etc. are defined. There are also available collections of criteria to detect refactoring opportunities; compilations of guidelines to help decide when and how to apply refactorings. However, refactoring tool implementors can not only base their work on the documentation available in refactoring catalogs because they do not offer clear guidelines on how to build the tools to automate these refactorings. Implementing refactoring tools without any guidance, involves reasoning about which will be the better plan to implement refactoring operations in the t
ool, their complexity or their graphical interface design, etc. This paper introduces a refactoring characterization, and proposes how it can help refactoring tool implementors on making decisions.
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