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Analysing refactoring dependencies using graph transformation

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Abstract

Refactoring is a widely accepted technique to improve the structure of object-oriented software. Nevertheless, existing tool support remains restricted to automatically applying refactoring transformations. Deciding what to refactor and which refactoring to apply still remains a difficult manual process, due to the many dependencies and interrelationships between relevant refactorings. In this paper, we represent refactorings as graph transformations, and we propose the technique of critical pair analysis to detect the implicit dependencies between refactorings. The results of this analysis can help the developer to make an informed decision of which refactoring is most suitable in a given context and why. We report on several experiments we carried out in the AGG graph transformation tool to support our claims.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Engineering Lab, Université de Mons-Hainaut, 7000, Mons, Belgium

    Tom Mens

  2. Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Philipps- Universität Marburg, Hans-Meerwein- Str, D-35032, Marburg, Germany

    Gabriele Taentzer

  3. Technische Universität Berlin, 10587, Berlin, Germany

    Olga Runge

Authors
  1. Tom Mens
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  2. Gabriele Taentzer
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  3. Olga Runge
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Correspondence to Tom Mens.

Additional information

Communicated by Dr. Francesco Parisi-Presicce.

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Mens, T., Taentzer, G. & Runge, O. Analysing refactoring dependencies using graph transformation. Softw Syst Model 6, 269–285 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-006-0044-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-006-0044-6

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