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2008•IEEE SoftwareOpen access

Refactoring Tools: Fitness for Purpose

Emerson Murphy-Hill, Andrew P. Black

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Abstract

Refactoring is the process of changing software's structure while preserving its external behavior. Refactoring tools can improve the speed and accuracy with which developers create and maintain software-but only if they are used. In practice, tools are not used as much as they could be; this seems to be because sometimes they do not align with the refactoring tactic preferred by most programmers, a tactic the authors call "floss refactoring." They propose five principles that characterize successful floss-refactoring tools - principles that can help programmers to choose the most appropriate refactoring tools and also help toolsmiths to design tools that fit the programmer's purpose.

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What this paper is about

Refactoring is the process of changing software's structure while preserving its external behavior. Refactoring tools can improve the speed and accuracy with which developers create and maintain software-but only if they are used. In practice, tools are not used as much as they could be; this seems to be because sometimes they do not align with the refactoring tactic preferred by most programmers, a tactic the authors call "floss refactoring." They propose five principles that characterize successful floss-refactoring tools - principles that can help programmers to choose the most appropriate refactoring tools and also help toolsmiths to design tools that fit the programmer's purpose.

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OpenAlex reports 154 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

Refactoring is the process of changing software's structure while preserving its external behavior. Refactoring tools can improve the speed and accuracy with which developers create and maintain software-but only if they are used. In practice, tools are not used as much as they could be; this seems to be because sometimes they do not align with the refactoring tactic preferred by most programmers, a tactic the authors call "floss refactoring." They propose five principles that characterize successful floss-refactoring tools - principles that can help programmers to choose the most appropriate refactoring tools and also help toolsmiths to design tools that fit the programmer's purpose.

Key concepts: Code refactoring, Computer science, Software engineering, Programmer, Process (computing), Software, Programming language, Software maintenance

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