%\usepackage{mathpazo}
\urlstyle{sf}
\usepackage{listings}
+\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{tikz-qtree}
\usepackage{cleveref}
\usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}
-\usepackage[style=alphabetic,backend=biber]{biblatex}
+\usepackage[style=alphabetic,backend=biber,doi=false,isbn=false]{biblatex}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{minted}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usemintedstyle{bw}
+
+\def\mintedframesep{11pt}
+
\usepackage{perpage} %the perpage package
\MakePerPage{footnote} %the perpage package command
%\newcommand{\myref}[1]{\cref{#1} on \cpageref{#1}}
\newcommand{\myref}[1]{\vref{#1}}
\newcommand{\Myref}[1]{\Vref{#1}}
+\newcommand{\mysimpleref}[1]{\cref{#1}}
+\newcommand{\Mysimpleref}[1]{\Cref{#1}}
%\newcommand{\glossref}[1]{\textsuperscript{(\glsrefentry{#1})}}
%\newcommand{\gloss}[1]{\gls{#1}\glossref{#1}}
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth-4pt}#2\end{minipage}}}
\title{Automated Composition of Refactorings}
-\subtitle{Composing the Extract and Move Method refactorings in Eclipse}
+\subtitle{Implementing and evaluating a search-based Extract and Move Method
+refactoring}
\author{Erlend Kristiansen}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{designPattern}
{
name={design pattern},
- description={A design pattern is a named abstraction, that is meant to solve a
+ description={A design pattern is a named abstraction that is meant to solve a
general design problem. It describes the key aspects of a common problem and
identifies its participators and how they collaborate},
plural={design patterns}
description={An enclosing class is the class that surrounds any specific piece
of code that is written in the inner scope of this class},
}
+\newglossaryentry{mementoPattern}
+{
+ name={memento pattern},
+ description={The memento pattern is a software design pattern that is used to
+ capture an object's internal state so that it can be restored to this state
+ later\citing{designPatterns}},
+}
%\newglossaryentry{extractMethod}
%{
% name=\refa{Extract Method},
%}
\bibliography{bibliography/master-thesis-erlenkr-bibliography}
+\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
+ bibliography = {References},
+}
+\newbibmacro{string+doi}[1]{%
+ \iffieldundef{doi}{#1}{\href{http://dx.doi.org/\thefield{doi}}{#1}}}
+\DeclareFieldFormat{title}{\usebibmacro{string+doi}{\mkbibemph{#1}}}
+\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\usebibmacro{string+doi}{\mkbibquote{#1}}}
% UML comment in TikZ:
% ref: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/103688/folded-paper-shape-tikz
%\interfootnotelinepenalty=10000
+% Space between table rows
+\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.3}
+% Multicolumns
+\newcommand{\spancols}[2]{\multicolumn{#1}{@{}l@{}}{#2}}
+% Column types
+\newcolumntype{L}[1]{>{\hsize=#1\hsize\raggedright\arraybackslash}X}%
+\newcolumntype{R}[1]{>{\hsize=#1\hsize\raggedleft\arraybackslash}X}%
+
+
\begin{document}
-\pagenumbering{roman}
+%\pagenumbering{arabic}
+\mainmatter
\ififorside
-\frontmatter{}
+%\frontmatter{}
+%\setcounter{page}{3}
\chapter*{Abstract}
\todoin{\textbf{Remove all todos (including list) before delivery/printing!!!
\tableofcontents{}
\listoffigures{}
\listoftables{}
+\listoflistings{}
-\chapter*{Preface}
+%\mainmatter
+%\setcounter{page}{13}
-The discussions in this report must be seen in the context of object oriented
-programming languages, and Java in particular, since that is the language in
-which most of the examples will be given. All though the techniques discussed
-may be applicable to languages from other paradigms, they will not be the
-subject of this report.
+\chapter{Introduction}
+
+\section{Motivation and structure}
+
+For large software projects, complex program source code is an issue. It impacts
+the cost of maintenance in a negative way. It often stalls the implementation of
+new functionality and other program changes. The code may be difficult to
+understand, the changes may introduce new bugs that are hard to find and its
+complexity can simply keep people from doing code changes in fear of breaking
+some dependent piece of code. All these problems are related, and often lead to
+a vicious circle that slowly degrades the overall quality of a project.
+
+More specifically, and in an object-oriented context, a class may depend on a
+number of other classes. Sometimes these intimate relationships are appropriate,
+and sometimes they are not. Inappropriate \emph{coupling} between classes can
+make it difficult to know whether or not a change that is aimed at fixing a
+specific problem also alters the behavior of another part of a program.
+
+One of the tools that are used to fight complexity and coupling in program
+source code is \emph{refactoring}. The intention for this master's thesis is
+therefore to create an automated composite refactoring that reduces coupling
+between classes. The refactoring shall be able to operate automatically in all
+phases of a refactoring, from performing analysis to executing changes. It is
+also a requirement that it should be able to process large quantities of source
+code in a reasonable amount of time.
+
+The current chapter proceeds in \mysimpleref{sec:refactoring} by describing what
+refactoring is. Then the project is presented in \mysimpleref{sec:project},
+before the chapter is concluded with a brief discussion of related work in
+\mysimpleref{sec:relatedWork}.
+
+\Mysimpleref{ch:extractAndMoveMethod} shows the workings of our refactoring
+together with a simple example illustrating this.
+
+\todoin{Structure. Write later\ldots}
-\mainmatter
-\chapter{What is Refactoring?}
+\section{What is refactoring?}\label{sec:refactoring}
This question is best answered by first defining the concept of a
\emph{refactoring}, what it is to \emph{refactor}, and then discuss what aspects
of programming make people want to refactor their code.
-\section{Defining refactoring}
+\subsection{Defining refactoring}
Martin Fowler, in his classic book on refactoring\citing{refactoring}, defines a
refactoring like this:
\noindent This definition assigns additional meaning to the word
\emph{refactoring}, beyond the composition of the prefix \emph{re-}, usually
meaning something like ``again'' or ``anew'', and the word \emph{factoring},
-that can mean to isolate the \emph{factors} of something. Here a \emph{factor}
+which can mean to isolate the \emph{factors} of something. Here a \emph{factor}
would be close to the mathematical definition of something that divides a
quantity, without leaving a remainder. Fowler is mixing the \emph{motivation}
behind refactoring into his definition. Instead it could be more refined, formed
to only consider the \emph{mechanical} and \emph{behavioral} aspects of
-refactoring. That is to factor the program again, putting it together in a
+refactoring. That is to factor the program again, putting it together in a
different way than before, while preserving the behavior of the program. An
alternative definition could then be:
mechanics in terms of other refactorings.
\end{comment}
-\section{The etymology of 'refactoring'}
+\subsection{The etymology of 'refactoring'}
It is a little difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of the word
``refactoring'', as it seems to have evolved as part of a colloquial
terminology, more than a scientific term. There is no authoritative source for a
was first published in 1984 by the \name{Forth Interest Group}. Then it was
reprinted in 1994 with minor typographical corrections, before it was
transcribed into an electronic edition typeset in \LaTeX\ and published under a
-Creative Commons licence in
+Creative Commons license in
2004. The edition cited here is the 2004 edition, but the content should
essentially be as in 1984.}. The exact word is only printed one
place~\cite[p.~232]{brodie2004}, but the term \emph{factoring} is prominent in
-the book, that also contains a whole chapter dedicated to (re)factoring, and how
-to keep the (Forth) code clean and maintainable.
+the book, which also contains a whole chapter dedicated to (re)factoring, and
+how to keep the (Forth) code clean and maintainable.
\begin{quote}
\ldots good factoring technique is perhaps the most important skill for a
the \name{Forth} and \name{Smalltalk} communities, but that it emerged
independently in each of the communities.
-\section{Motivation -- Why people refactor}
+\subsection{Reasons for refactoring}
There are many reasons why people want to refactor their programs. They can for
instance do it to remove duplication, break up long methods or to introduce
-design patterns into their software systems. The shared trait for all these are
+design patterns into their software systems. The shared trait for all these is
that peoples' intentions are to make their programs \emph{better}, in some
sense. But what aspects of their programs are becoming improved?
smaller ones, using the \ExtractMethod refactoring\citing{refactoring}. Then
you may discover something about a program that you were not aware of before;
revealing bugs you did not know about or could not find due to the complex
-structure of your program. \todo{Proof?} Making the methods smaller and giving
-good names to the new ones clarifies the algorithms and enhances the
-\emph{understandability} of the program \see{magic_number_seven}. This makes
-refactoring an excellent method for exploring unknown program code, or code that
-you had forgotten that you wrote.
+structure of your program. Making the methods smaller and giving good names to
+the new ones clarifies the algorithms and enhances the \emph{understandability}
+of the program \see{magic_number_seven}. This makes refactoring an excellent
+method for exploring unknown program code, or code that you had forgotten that
+you wrote.
Most primitive refactorings are simple, and usually involves moving code
around\citing{kerievsky2005}. The motivation behind them may first be revealed
and money should also be able to open the eyes of the many nearsighted managers
that seldom see beyond the next milestone.
-\section{The magical number seven}\label{magic_number_seven}
+\subsection{The magical number seven}\label{magic_number_seven}
The article \tit{The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our
capacity for processing information}\citing{miller1956} by George A. Miller,
was published in the journal \name{Psychological Review} in 1956. It presents
like when humans learn to read. First they must learn how to recognize letters.
Then they can learn distinct words, and later read sequences of words that form
whole sentences. Eventually, most of them will be able to read whole books and
-briefly retell the important parts of its content. This suggest that the use of
+briefly retell the important parts of its content. This suggests that the use of
design patterns is a good idea when reasoning about computer programs. With
extensive use of design patterns when creating complex program structures, one
does not always have to read whole classes of code to comprehend how they
computer programs that are easier to maintain and have code that is easier (and
better) understood.
-\section{Notable contributions to the refactoring literature}
-\todoin{Thinking Forth?}
+\subsection{Notable contributions to the refactoring literature}
\begin{description}
\item[1992] William F. Opdyke submits his doctoral dissertation called
\tit{Refactoring Object-Oriented Frameworks}\citing{opdyke1992}. This work
- defines a set of refactorings, that are behavior preserving given that their
+ defines a set of refactorings that are behavior-preserving given that their
preconditions are met. The dissertation is focused on the automation of
refactorings.
\item[1999] Martin Fowler et al.: \tit{Refactoring: Improving the Design of
design \see{relationToDesignPatterns}.
\end{description}
-\section{Tool support (for Java)}\label{toolSupport}
+\subsection{Tool support (for Java)}\label{toolSupport}
This section will briefly compare the refactoring support of the three IDEs
\name{Eclipse}\footnote{\url{http://www.eclipse.org/}}, \name{IntelliJ
IDEA}\footnote{The IDE under comparison is the \name{Community Edition},
Regarding the \MoveMethod refactoring, the \name{Eclipse} and \name{IntelliJ}
IDEs do the job in very similar manners. In most situations they both do a
satisfying job by producing the expected outcome. But they do nothing to check
-that the result does not break the semantics of the program \see{correctness}.
+that the result does not break the semantics of the program
+\see{sec:correctness}.
The \name{NetBeans} IDE implements this refactoring in a somewhat
unsophisticated way. For starters, the refactoring's default destination for the
move, is the same class as the method already resides in, although it refuses to
of \type{X} by accessing them through \var{c.x}, where \var{c} is a parameter of
type \type{C} that is added the method \method{f} when it is moved. (This is
seldom the desired outcome of this refactoring, but ironically, this ``feature''
-keeps \name{NetBeans} from breaking the code in the example from \myref{correctness}.)
-If \var{c.x} for some reason is inaccessible to \type{X}, as in this case, the
-refactoring breaks the code, and it will not compile. \name{NetBeans} presents a
-preview of the refactoring outcome, but the preview does not catch it if the IDE
-is about break the program.
+keeps \name{NetBeans} from breaking the code in the example from
+\myref{sec:correctness}.) If \var{c.x} for some reason is inaccessible to
+\type{X}, as in this case, the refactoring breaks the code, and it will not
+compile. \name{NetBeans} presents a preview of the refactoring outcome, but the
+preview does not catch it if the IDE is about break the program.
The IDEs under investigation seem to have fairly good support for primitive
refactorings, but what about more complex ones, such as
using the \refa{Extract Class} refactoring in \name{Eclipse}. When it comes to
\name{NetBeans}, it does not even show an attempt on providing this refactoring.
-\section{The relation to design patterns}\label{relationToDesignPatterns}
+\subsection{The relation to design patterns}\label{relationToDesignPatterns}
Refactoring and design patterns have at least one thing in common, they are both
promoted by advocates of \emph{clean code}\citing{cleanCode} as fundamental
\begin{quote}
Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for
- extension, but closed for modification.\footnote{See
- \url{http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OpenClosedPrinciple} or
- \url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open/closed_principle}}
+ extension, but closed for modification.
\end{quote}
Maintainability is often thought of as the ability to be able to introduce new
decisions that has to be made before proceeding in the process, and that is
going to define a project for all of its unforeseeable future.
-\begin{comment}
-
-\section{Classification of refactorings}
-% only interesting refactorings
-% with 2 detailed examples? One for structured and one for intra-method?
-% Is replacing Bubblesort with Quick Sort considered a refactoring?
-
-\subsection{Structural refactorings}
-
-\subsubsection{Primitive refactorings}
-
-% Composing Methods
-\explanation{Extract Method}{You have a code fragment that can be grouped
-together.}{Turn the fragment into a method whose name explains the purpose of
-the method.}
-
-\explanation{Inline Method}{A method's body is just as clear as its name.}{Put
-the method's body into the body of its callers and remove the method.}
-
-\explanation{Inline Temp}{You have a temp that is assigned to once with a simple
-expression, and the temp is getting in the way of other refactorings.}{Replace
-all references to that temp with the expression}
-
-% Moving Features Between Objects
-\explanation{Move Method}{A method is, or will be, using or used by more
-features of another class than the class on which it is defined.}{Create a new
-method with a similar body in the class it uses most. Either turn the old method
-into a simple delegation, or remove it altogether.}
-
-\explanation{Move Field}{A field is, or will be, used by another class more than
-the class on which it is defined}{Create a new field in the target class, and
-change all its users.}
-
-% Organizing Data
-\explanation{Replace Magic Number with Symbolic Constant}{You have a literal
-number with a particular meaning.}{Create a constant, name it after the meaning,
-and replace the number with it.}
-
-\explanation{Encapsulate Field}{There is a public field.}{Make it private and
-provide accessors.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Type Code with Class}{A class has a numeric type code that
-does not affect its behavior.}{Replace the number with a new class.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Type Code with Subclasses}{You have an immutable type code
-that affects the behavior of a class.}{Replace the type code with subclasses.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Type Code with State/Strategy}{You have a type code that
-affects the behavior of a class, but you cannot use subclassing.}{Replace the
-type code with a state object.}
-
-% Simplifying Conditional Expressions
-\explanation{Consolidate Duplicate Conditional Fragments}{The same fragment of
-code is in all branches of a conditional expression.}{Move it outside of the
-expression.}
-
-\explanation{Remove Control Flag}{You have a variable that is acting as a
-control flag fro a series of boolean expressions.}{Use a break or return
-instead.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Nested Conditional with Guard Clauses}{A method has
-conditional behavior that does not make clear the normal path of
-execution.}{Use guard clauses for all special cases.}
-
-\explanation{Introduce Null Object}{You have repeated checks for a null
-value.}{Replace the null value with a null object.}
-
-\explanation{Introduce Assertion}{A section of code assumes something about the
-state of the program.}{Make the assumption explicit with an assertion.}
-
-% Making Method Calls Simpler
-\explanation{Rename Method}{The name of a method does not reveal its
-purpose.}{Change the name of the method}
-
-\explanation{Add Parameter}{A method needs more information from its
-caller.}{Add a parameter for an object that can pass on this information.}
-
-\explanation{Remove Parameter}{A parameter is no longer used by the method
-body.}{Remove it.}
-
-%\explanation{Parameterize Method}{Several methods do similar things but with
-%different values contained in the method.}{Create one method that uses a
-%parameter for the different values.}
-
-\explanation{Preserve Whole Object}{You are getting several values from an
-object and passing these values as parameters in a method call.}{Send the whole
-object instead.}
-
-\explanation{Remove Setting Method}{A field should be set at creation time and
-never altered.}{Remove any setting method for that field.}
-
-\explanation{Hide Method}{A method is not used by any other class.}{Make the
-method private.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Constructor with Factory Method}{You want to do more than
-simple construction when you create an object}{Replace the constructor with a
-factory method.}
-
-% Dealing with Generalization
-\explanation{Pull Up Field}{Two subclasses have the same field.}{Move the field
-to the superclass.}
-
-\explanation{Pull Up Method}{You have methods with identical results on
-subclasses.}{Move them to the superclass.}
-
-\explanation{Push Down Method}{Behavior on a superclass is relevant only for
-some of its subclasses.}{Move it to those subclasses.}
-
-\explanation{Push Down Field}{A field is used only by some subclasses.}{Move the
-field to those subclasses}
-
-\explanation{Extract Interface}{Several clients use the same subset of a class's
-interface, or two classes have part of their interfaces in common.}{Extract the
-subset into an interface.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Inheritance with Delegation}{A subclass uses only part of a
-superclasses interface or does not want to inherit data.}{Create a field for the
-superclass, adjust methods to delegate to the superclass, and remove the
-subclassing.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Delegation with Inheritance}{You're using delegation and
-are often writing many simple delegations for the entire interface}{Make the
-delegating class a subclass of the delegate.}
-
-\subsubsection{Composite refactorings}
-
-% Composing Methods
-% \explanation{Replace Method with Method Object}{}{}
-
-% Moving Features Between Objects
-\explanation{Extract Class}{You have one class doing work that should be done by
-two}{Create a new class and move the relevant fields and methods from the old
-class into the new class.}
-
-\explanation{Inline Class}{A class isn't doing very much.}{Move all its features
-into another class and delete it.}
-
-\explanation{Hide Delegate}{A client is calling a delegate class of an
-object.}{Create Methods on the server to hide the delegate.}
-
-\explanation{Remove Middle Man}{A class is doing to much simple delegation.}{Get
-the client to call the delegate directly.}
-
-% Organizing Data
-\explanation{Replace Data Value with Object}{You have a data item that needs
-additional data or behavior.}{Turn the data item into an object.}
-
-\explanation{Change Value to Reference}{You have a class with many equal
-instances that you want to replace with a single object.}{Turn the object into a
-reference object.}
-
-\explanation{Encapsulate Collection}{A method returns a collection}{Make it
-return a read-only view and provide add/remove methods.}
-
-% \explanation{Replace Array with Object}{}{}
-
-\explanation{Replace Subclass with Fields}{You have subclasses that vary only in
-methods that return constant data.}{Change the methods to superclass fields and
-eliminate the subclasses.}
-
-% Simplifying Conditional Expressions
-\explanation{Decompose Conditional}{You have a complicated conditional
-(if-then-else) statement.}{Extract methods from the condition, then part, an
-else part.}
-
-\explanation{Consolidate Conditional Expression}{You have a sequence of
-conditional tests with the same result.}{Combine them into a single conditional
-expression and extract it.}
-
-\explanation{Replace Conditional with Polymorphism}{You have a conditional that
-chooses different behavior depending on the type of an object.}{Move each leg
-of the conditional to an overriding method in a subclass. Make the original
-method abstract.}
+\subsection{The impact on software quality}
-% Making Method Calls Simpler
-\explanation{Replace Parameter with Method}{An object invokes a method, then
-passes the result as a parameter for a method. The receiver can also invoke this
-method.}{Remove the parameter and let the receiver invoke the method.}
-
-\explanation{Introduce Parameter Object}{You have a group of parameters that
-naturally go together.}{Replace them with an object.}
-
-% Dealing with Generalization
-\explanation{Extract Subclass}{A class has features that are used only in some
-instances.}{Create a subclass for that subset of features.}
-
-\explanation{Extract Superclass}{You have two classes with similar
-features.}{Create a superclass and move the common features to the
-superclass.}
-
-\explanation{Collapse Hierarchy}{A superclass and subclass are not very
-different.}{Merge them together.}
-
-\explanation{Form Template Method}{You have two methods in subclasses that
-perform similar steps in the same order, yet the steps are different.}{Get the
-steps into methods with the same signature, so that the original methods become
-the same. Then you can pull them up.}
-
-
-\subsection{Functional refactorings}
-
-\explanation{Substitute Algorithm}{You want to replace an algorithm with one
-that is clearer.}{Replace the body of the method with the new algorithm.}
-
-\end{comment}
-
-\section{The impact on software quality}
-
-\subsection{What is software quality?}
+\subsubsection{What is software quality?}
The term \emph{software quality} has many meanings. It all depends on the
context we put it in. If we look at it with the eyes of a software developer, it
usually means that the software is easily maintainable and testable, or in other
addition, such things as good documentation could be measured, but this is out
of the scope of this document.)
-\subsection{The impact on performance}
+\subsubsection{The impact on performance}
\begin{quote}
- Refactoring certainly will make software go more slowly\footnote{With todays
+ Refactoring certainly will make software go more slowly\footnote{With today's
compiler optimization techniques and performance tuning of e.g. the Java
virtual machine, the penalties of object creation and method calls are
debatable.}, but it also makes the software more amenable to performance
design, leaving the performance tuning until after \gloss{profiling} the
software and having isolated the actual problem areas.
-\section{Composite refactorings}\label{compositeRefactorings}
-\todo{motivation, examples, manual vs automated?, what about refactoring in a
-very large code base?}
+\subsection{Composite refactorings}\label{compositeRefactorings}
Generally, when thinking about refactoring, at the mechanical level, there are
essentially two kinds of refactorings. There are the \emph{primitive}
refactorings, and the \emph{composite} refactorings.
\label{fig:extractSuperclass}
\end{figure}
-\section{Manual vs. automated refactorings}
+\subsection{Manual vs. automated refactorings}
Refactoring is something every programmer does, even if \heshe does not known
the term \emph{refactoring}. Every refinement of source code that does not alter
the program's behavior is a refactoring. For small refactorings, such as
Then it is crucial to have proper tool support that can perform them
automatically. Tools that can parse source code and thus have semantic knowledge
about which occurrences of which names belong to what construct in the program.
-For even trying to perform one of these complex task manually, one would have to
-be very confident on the existing test suite \see{testing}.
+For even trying to perform one of these complex tasks manually, one would have
+to be very confident on the existing test suite \see{testing}.
-\section{Correctness of refactorings}\label{correctness}
+\subsection{Correctness of refactorings}\label{sec:correctness}
For automated refactorings to be truly useful, they must show a high degree of
behavior preservation. This last sentence might seem obvious, but there are
examples of refactorings in existing tools that break programs. In an ideal
world, every automated refactoring would be ``complete'', in the sense that it
would never break a program. In an ideal world, every program would also be free
from bugs. In modern IDEs the implemented automated refactorings are working for
-\emph{most} cases, that is enough for making them useful.
+\emph{most} cases, which is enough for making them useful.
I will now present an example of a \emph{corner case} where a program breaks
when a refactoring is applied. The example shows an \ExtractMethod refactoring
particular situation without altering the program's behavior, mainly because
its \refa{Move Method} refactoring implementation is a bit flawed in other ways
\see{toolSupport}.}. The target and the destination for the composed
- refactoring is shown in \myref{lst:correctnessExtractAndMove}. Note that the
+ refactoring are shown in \myref{lst:correctnessExtractAndMove}. Note that the
method \method{m(C c)} of class \type{X} assigns to the field \var{x} of the
argument \var{c} that has type \type{C}.
\begin{listing}[h]
\begin{multicols}{2}
-\begin{minted}[linenos]{java}
-// Refactoring target
+\begin{minted}[linenos,frame=topline,label={Refactoring
+ target},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
public class C {
public X x = new X();
\columnbreak
-\begin{minted}[]{java}
-// Method destination
+\begin{minted}[frame=topline,label={Method
+ destination},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
public class X {
public void m(C c) {
c.x = new X();
\end{listing}
The bug introduced in the previous example is of such a nature\footnote{Caused
- by aliasing. See \url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing_(computing)}}
- that it is very difficult to spot if the refactored code is not covered by
- tests. It does not generate compilation errors, and will thus only result in
- a runtime error or corrupted data, which might be hard to detect.
+by aliasing.} that it is very difficult to spot if the refactored code is not
+covered by tests. It does not generate compilation errors, and will thus only
+result in a runtime error or corrupted data, which might be hard to detect.
-\section{Refactoring and the importance of testing}\label{testing}
+\subsection{Refactoring and the importance of testing}\label{testing}
\begin{quote}
If you want to refactor, the essential precondition is having solid
tests.\citing{refactoring}
\end{quote}
When refactoring, there are roughly three classes of errors that can be made.
-The first class of errors are the ones that make the code unable to compile.
+The first class of errors is the one that makes the code unable to compile.
These \emph{compile-time} errors are of the nicer kind. They flash up at the
moment they are made (at least when using an IDE), and are usually easy to fix.
-The second class are the \emph{runtime} errors. Although they take a bit longer
-to surface, they usually manifest after some time in an illegal argument
+The second class is the \emph{runtime} errors. Although these errors take a bit
+longer to surface, they usually manifest after some time in an illegal argument
exception, null pointer exception or similar during the program execution.
-These kind of errors are a bit harder to handle, but at least they will show,
+These kinds of errors are a bit harder to handle, but at least they will show,
eventually. Then there are the \emph{behavior-changing} errors. These errors are
of the worst kind. They do not show up during compilation and they do not turn
on a blinking red light during runtime either. The program can seem to work
automated tests. Manual testing may have its uses, but when refactoring, it is
automated unit testing that dominate. For discovering behavior changes it is
especially important to have tests that cover potential problems, since these
-kind of errors does not reveal themselves.
+kinds of errors do not reveal themselves.
Unit testing is not a way to \emph{prove} that a program is correct, but it is a
way to make you confident that it \emph{probably} works as desired. In the
If the test coverage for a code base is perfect, then it should, theoretically,
be risk-free to perform refactorings on it. This is why automated tests and
-refactoring are such a great match.
+refactoring is such a great match.
-\subsection{Testing the code from correctness section}
+\subsubsection{Testing the code from correctness section}
The worst thing that can happen when refactoring is to introduce changes to the
-behavior of a program, as in the example on \myref{correctness}. This example
-may be trivial, but the essence is clear. The only problem with the example is
-that it is not clear how to create automated tests for it, without changing it
-in intrusive ways.
+behavior of a program, as in the example on \myref{sec:correctness}. This
+example may be trivial, but the essence is clear. The only problem with the
+example is that it is not clear how to create automated tests for it, without
+changing it in intrusive ways.
Unit tests, as they are known from the different \glosspl{xUnit} around, are
only suitable to test the \emph{result} of isolated operations. They can not
\end{comment}
-\chapter{The Project}
+\section{The project}\label{sec:project}
+In this section we look at the work that shall be done for this project, its
+building stones and some of the methodologies used.
-\section{Project description}
+\subsection{Project description}
The aim of this master's project will be to explore the relationship between the
\ExtractMethod and the \MoveMethod refactorings. This will be done by composing
the two into a composite refactoring. The refactoring will be called the
This composed refactoring is not well described in the literature, but it is
implemented in at least one tool called
\name{CodeRush}\footnote{\url{https://help.devexpress.com/\#CodeRush/CustomDocument3519}},
-that is an extension for \name{MS Visual
+which is an extension for \name{MS Visual
Studio}\footnote{\url{http://www.visualstudio.com/}}. In CodeRush it is called
\refa{Extract Method to
Type}\footnote{\url{https://help.devexpress.com/\#CodeRush/CustomDocument6710}},
execute the refactoring automatically, I have to make it analyze code to
determine the best selections to extract into new methods.
-\section{The primitive refactorings}
+\subsection{The premises}
+Before we can start manipulating source code and write a tool for doing so, we
+need to decide on a programming language for the code we are going to
+manipulate. Also, since we do not want to start from scratch by implementing
+primitive refactorings ourselves, we need to choose an existing tool that
+provides the needed refactorings. In addition to be able to perform changes, we
+need a framework for analyzing source code for the language we select.
+
+\subsubsection{Choosing the target language}
+Choosing which programming language the code that shall be manipulated shall be
+written in, is not a very difficult task. We choose to limit the possible
+languages to the object-oriented programming languages, since most of the
+terminology and literature regarding refactoring comes from the world of
+object-oriented programming. In addition, the language must have existing tool
+support for refactoring.
+
+The \name{Java} programming language\footnote{\url{https://www.java.com/}} is
+the dominating language when it comes to example code in the literature of
+refactoring, and is thus a natural choice. Java is perhaps, currently the most
+influential programming language in the world, with its \name{Java Virtual
+Machine} that runs on all of the most popular architectures and also supports
+dozens of other programming languages\footnote{They compile to Java bytecode.},
+with \name{Scala}, \name{Clojure} and \name{Groovy} as the most prominent ones.
+Java is currently the language that every other programming language is compared
+against. It is also the primary programming language for the author of this
+thesis.
+
+\subsubsection{Choosing the tools}
+When choosing a tool for manipulating Java, there are certain criteria that
+have to be met. First of all, the tool should have some existing refactoring
+support that this thesis can build upon. Secondly it should provide some kind of
+framework for parsing and analyzing Java source code. Third, it should itself be
+open source. This is both because of the need to be able to browse the code for
+the existing refactorings that is contained in the tool, and also because open
+source projects hold value in them selves. Another important aspect to consider
+is that open source projects of a certain size, usually has large communities of
+people connected to them, that are committed to answering questions regarding the
+use and misuse of the products, that to a large degree is made by the community
+itself.
+
+There is a certain class of tools that meet these criteria, namely the class of
+\emph{IDEs}\footnote{\emph{Integrated Development Environment}}. These are
+programs that are meant to support the whole production cycle of a computer
+program, and the most popular IDEs that support Java, generally have quite good
+refactoring support.
+
+The main contenders for this thesis is the \name{Eclipse IDE}, with the
+\name{Java development tools} (JDT), the \name{IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition}
+and the \name{NetBeans IDE} \see{toolSupport}. \name{Eclipse} and
+\name{NetBeans} are both free, open source and community driven, while the
+\name{IntelliJ IDEA} has an open sourced community edition that is free of
+charge, but also offer an \name{Ultimate Edition} with an extended set of
+features, at additional cost. All three IDEs supports adding plugins to extend
+their functionality and tools that can be used to parse and analyze Java source
+code. But one of the IDEs stand out as a favorite, and that is the \name{Eclipse
+IDE}. This is the most popular\citing{javaReport2011} among them and seems to be
+de facto standard IDE for Java development regardless of platform.
+
+
+\subsection{The primitive refactorings}
The refactorings presented here are the primitive refactorings used in this
project. They are the abstract building blocks used by the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
refactoring.
-\subsection{The Extract Method refactoring}
+\paragraph{The Extract Method refactoring}
The \refa{Extract Method} refactoring is used to extract a fragment of code
from its context and into a new method. A call to the new method is inlined
where the fragment was before. It is used to break code into logical units, with
\begin{listing}[h]
\begin{multicols}{2}
- \begin{minted}[samepage]{java}
- // Before
+ \begin{minted}[samepage,frame=topline,label={Before},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
class C {
void method() {
X x = new X();
\columnbreak
- \begin{minted}[samepage]{java}
- // After
+ \begin{minted}[samepage,frame=topline,label={After},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
class C {
void method() {
X x = new X();
\label{lst:extractMethodRefactoring}
\end{listing}
-\subsection{The Move Method refactoring}
+\paragraph{The Move Method refactoring}
The \refa{Move Method} refactoring is used to move a method from one class to
another. This can be appropriate if the method is using more features of another
class than of the class which it is currently defined.
\begin{listing}[h]
\begin{multicols}{2}
- \begin{minted}[samepage]{java}
- // Before
+ \begin{minted}[samepage,frame=topline,label={Before},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
class C {
void method() {
X x = new X();
\columnbreak
- \begin{minted}[samepage]{java}
- // After
+ \begin{minted}[samepage,frame=topline,label={After},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
class C {
void method() {
X x = new X();
\label{lst:moveMethodRefactoring}
\end{listing}
-\section{The Extract and Move Method refactoring}
+\subsection{The Extract and Move Method refactoring}
The \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring is a composite refactoring composed of the
primitive \ExtractMethod and \MoveMethod refactorings. The effect of this
refactoring on source code is the same as when extracting a method and moving it
-to another class. Conseptually, this is done without an intermediate step. In
+to another class. Conceptually, this is done without an intermediate step. In
practice, as we shall see later, an intermediate step may be necessary.
An example of this composite refactoring is shown in
\begin{listing}[h]
\begin{multicols}{2}
- \begin{minted}[samepage]{java}
- // Before
+ \begin{minted}[samepage,frame=topline,label={Before},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
class C {
void method() {
X x = new X();
\columnbreak
- \begin{minted}[samepage]{java}
- // After
+ \begin{minted}[samepage,frame=topline,label={After},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
class C {
void method() {
X x = new X();
\label{lst:extractAndMoveMethodRefactoring}
\end{listing}
-\section{Research questions}
+\subsection{The Coupling Between Object Classes metric}\label{sec:CBO}
+The best known metric for measuring coupling between classes in object-oriented
+software is called \metr{Coupling Between Object Classes}, usually abbreviated
+as CBO. The metric is defined in the article \tit{A Metrics Suite for Object
+Oriented Design}\citing{metricsSuite1994} by Chidamber and Kemerer, published in
+1994.
+
+\definition{\emph{CBO} for a class is a count of the number of other classes to
+which it is coupled.}
+
+An object is coupled to another object if one of them acts on the other by using
+methods or instance variables of the other object. This relation goes both ways,
+so both outgoing and incoming uses are counted. Each coupling relationship is
+only considered once when measuring CBO for a class.
+
+\paragraph{How can the Extract and Move Method refactoring improve CBO?}
+\Myref{lst:CBOExample} shows how CBO changes for a class when it is refactored
+with the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring. In the example we consider only the
+CBO value of class \type{C}.
+
+\begin{listing}[h]
+\begin{multicols}{2}
+\begin{minted}[linenos,samepage,frame=topline,label={Before},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
+class C {
+ A a; B b;
+ X x;
+ void method() {
+ x.y.foo();
+ x.y.bar();
+ }
+ /* Uses of A and B.
+ No uses of other
+ classes. */
+}
+
+class X {
+ Y y;
+ /* No uses of C.
+ Uses of Y. */
+}
+
+class Y {
+ void foo(){
+ /* No uses of C. */
+ }
+ void bar(){
+ /* No uses of C. */
+ }
+}
+\end{minted}
+
+\columnbreak
+
+\begin{minted}[linenos,samepage,frame=topline,label={After},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
+class C {
+ A a; B b;
+ X x;
+ void method() {
+ x.fooBar();
+ }
+ /* Uses of A and B.
+ No uses of other
+ classes. */
+}
+
+class X {
+ Y y;
+ /* No uses of C.
+ Uses of Y. */
+ void fooBar() {
+ y.foo();
+ y.bar();
+ }
+}
+
+class Y {
+ void foo(){
+ /* No uses of C. */
+ }
+ void bar(){
+ /* No uses of C. */
+ }
+}
+ \end{minted}
+\end{multicols}
+\caption{An example of improving CBO. Class \type{C} has a CBO value of 4
+before refactoring it, and 3 after.}
+\label{lst:CBOExample}
+\end{listing}
+
+Before refactoring the class \type{C} with the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring, it has a CBO value of 4. The class uses members of the classes
+\type{A} and \type{B}, which accounts for 2 of the coupling relationships of
+class \type{C}. In addition to this, it uses its variable \var{x} with type
+\type{X} and also the methods \method{foo} and \method{bar} declared in class
+\type{Y}, giving it a total CBO value of 4.
+
+The after-part of the example code in \mysimpleref{lst:CBOExample} shows the
+result of extracting the lines
+5 and 6 of class \type{C} into a new method \method{fooBar}, with a subsequent
+ move of it to class \type{X}.
+
+With respect to the CBO metric, the refactoring action accomplishes something
+important: It eliminates the uses of class \type{Y} from class \type{C}. This
+means that the class \type{C} is no longer coupled to \type{Y}, only the classes
+\type{A}, \type{B} and \type{X}. The CBO value of class \type{C} is therefore 3
+after refactoring, while no other class have received any increase in CBO.
+
+The example shown here is an ideal situation. Coupling is reduced for one class
+without any increase of coupling for another class. There is also another point
+that is important. It is the fact that to reduce the CBO value for a class, we
+need to remove \emph{all} its uses of another class. This is done for the class
+\type{C} in \myref{lst:CBOExample}, where all uses of class \type{Y} is removed
+by the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+\todoin{Highlight code}
+
+
+\subsection{Research questions}\label{sec:researchQuestions}
The main question that I seek an answer to in this thesis is:
\begin{quote}
\paragraph{Can we do this efficiently?} Can we automate the analysis and
execution of the refactoring so it can be run in a reasonable amount of time?
-And what does \emph{reasonable} mean in this context?
-And, assuming the refactoring does in fact improve the quality of source code:
+\paragraph{Can we perform changes safely?} Can we take actions to prevent the
+refactoring from breaking the code? By breaking the code we mean to either do
+changes that do not compile, or make changes that alter the behavior of the
+program.
-\paragraph{How can the automation of the refactoring be helpful?} What is the
-usefullness of the refactoring in a software development setting? In what parts
-of the development process can the refactoring play a role?
+\paragraph{Can we improve the quality of source code?} Assuming that the
+refactoring is safe: Is it feasible to assure that the code we refactor actually
+gets better in terms of coupling?
-\section{Choosing the target language}
-Choosing which programming language the code that shall be manipulated shall be
-written in, is not a very difficult task. We choose to limit the possible
-languages to the object-oriented programming languages, since most of the
-terminology and literature regarding refactoring comes from the world of
-object-oriented programming. In addition, the language must have existing tool
-support for refactoring.
+\paragraph{How can the automation of the refactoring be helpful?} Assuming the
+refactoring does in fact improve the quality of source code and is safe to use:
+What is the usefulness of the refactoring in a software development setting? In
+what parts of the development process can the refactoring play a role?
-The \name{Java} programming language\footnote{\url{https://www.java.com/}} is
-the dominating language when it comes to example code in the literature of
-refactoring, and is thus a natural choice. Java is perhaps, currently the most
-influential programming language in the world, with its \name{Java Virtual
-Machine} that runs on all of the most popular architectures and also supports
-dozens of other programming languages\footnote{They compile to java bytecode.},
-with \name{Scala}, \name{Clojure} and \name{Groovy} as the most prominent ones.
-Java is currently the language that every other programming language is compared
-against. It is also the primary programming language for the author of this
+\subsection{Methodology}
+This section will present some of the methods used during the work of this
thesis.
-\section{Choosing the tools}
-When choosing a tool for manipulating Java, there are certain criteria that
-have to be met. First of all, the tool should have some existing refactoring
-support that this thesis can build upon. Secondly it should provide some kind of
-framework for parsing and analyzing Java source code. Third, it should itself be
-open source. This is both because of the need to be able to browse the code for
-the existing refactorings that is contained in the tool, and also because open
-source projects hold value in them selves. Another important aspect to consider
-is that open source projects of a certain size, usually has large communities of
-people connected to them, that are committed to answering questions regarding the
-use and misuse of the products, that to a large degree is made by the community
-itself.
+\subsubsection{Evolutionary design}
+In the programming work for this project, I have tried using a design strategy
+called evolutionary design, also known as continuous or incremental
+design\citing{wiki_continuous_2014}. It is a software design strategy advocated
+by the Extreme Programming community. The essence of the strategy is that you
+should let the design of your program evolve naturally as your requirements
+change. This is seen in contrast with up-front design, where design decisions
+are made early in the process.
-There is a certain class of tools that meet these criteria, namely the class of
-\emph{IDEs}\footnote{\emph{Integrated Development Environment}}. These are
-programs that is meant to support the whole production cycle of a computer
-program, and the most popular IDEs that support Java, generally have quite good
-refactoring support.
+The motivation behind evolutionary design is to keep the design of software as
+simple as possible. This means not introducing unneeded functionality into a
+program. You should defer introducing flexibility into your software, until it
+is needed to be able to add functionality in a clean way.
-The main contenders for this thesis is the \name{Eclipse IDE}, with the
-\name{Java development tools} (JDT), the \name{IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition}
-and the \name{NetBeans IDE} \see{toolSupport}. \name{Eclipse} and
-\name{NetBeans} are both free, open source and community driven, while the
-\name{IntelliJ IDEA} has an open sourced community edition that is free of
-charge, but also offer an \name{Ultimate Edition} with an extended set of
-features, at additional cost. All three IDEs supports adding plugins to extend
-their functionality and tools that can be used to parse and analyze Java source
-code. But one of the IDEs stand out as a favorite, and that is the \name{Eclipse
-IDE}. This is the most popular\citing{javaReport2011} among them and seems to be
-de facto standard IDE for Java development regardless of platform.
+Holding up design decisions, implies that the time will eventually come when
+decisions have to be made. The flexibility of the design then relies on the
+programmer's abilities to perform the necessary refactoring, and \his confidence
+in those abilities. From my experience working on this project, I can say that
+this confidence is greatly enhanced by having automated tests to rely on
+\see{tdd}.
+The choice of going for evolutionary design developed naturally. As Fowler
+points out in his article \tit{Is Design Dead?}, evolutionary design much
+resembles the ``code and fix'' development strategy\citing{fowler_design_2004}.
+A strategy that most of us have practiced in school. This was also the case when
+I first started this work. I had to learn the inner workings of Eclipse and its
+refactoring-related plugins. That meant a lot of fumbling around with code I did
+not know, in a trial and error fashion. Eventually I started writing tests for
+my code, and my design began to evolve.
-\chapter{Semantics}
-\todoin{Rename chapter?}
+\subsubsection{Test-driven development}\label{tdd}
+As mentioned before, the project started out as a classic code and fix
+development process. My focus was aimed at getting something to work, rather
+than doing so according to best practice. This resulted in a project that got
+out of its starting blocks, but it was not accompanied by any tests. Hence it
+was soon difficult to make any code changes with the confidence that the program
+was still correct afterwards (assuming it was so before changing it). I always
+knew that I had to introduce some tests at one point, but this experience
+accelerated the process of leading me onto the path of testing.
-\section{The inputs to the refactoring}
-For executing an \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring, there are two simple
-requirements. The first thing the refactoring need is a text selection, telling
-it what to extract. Its second requirement is a target for the subsequent move
-operation.
+I then wrote tests for the core functionality of the plugin, and thus gained
+more confidence in the correctness of my code. I could now perform quite drastic
+changes without ``wetting my pants``. After this, nearly all of the semantic
+changes done to the business logic of the project, or the addition of new
+functionality, were made in a test-driven manner. This means that before
+performing any changes, I would define the desired functionality through a set
+of tests. I would then run the tests to check that they were run and that they
+did not pass. Then I would do any code changes necessary to make the tests
+pass. The definition of how the program is supposed to operate is then captured
+by the tests. However, this does not prove the correctness of the analysis
+leading to the test definitions.
-The extracted method must be called instead of the selection that makes up its
-body. Also, the method call has to be performed via a variable, since the method
-is not static. \todo{Explain why static methods are not considered} Therefore,
-the move target must be a variable in the scope of the extracted selection. The
-actual new location for the extracted method will be the class representing the
-type of the move target variable. But, since the method also must be called
-through a variable, it makes sense to define the move target to be either a
-local variable or a field in the scope of the text selection.
+\subsection{Case studies}
+The case study methodology is used to show how the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring performs on real code, not just toy examples. The case studies are
+used to analyze our project so we can conclude on its completeness and
+usefulness.
+
+\subsection{Dogfooding}
+Dogfooding is a methodology where you use your own tools to do your job, also
+referred to as ``eating your own dog food''\citing{harrisonDogfooding2006}. It
+is used in this project to see if we can refactor our own refactoring code and
+still use it to refactor other code.
+
+\section{Related work}\label{sec:relatedWork}
+Here we present some work related to automated composition of refactorings.
+
+\subsection{Refactoring safety}\label{sec:saferRefactoring}
+This section presents a couple of approaches to improving the safety of
+performing refactorings. In these approaches, the problems that are addressed
+are not compilation problems, but behavior-altering problems that are not easily
+discovered during static analysis of source code. An example of such a problem
+is presented in \myref{sec:correctness}.
+
+\subsubsection{Project ``Safer Refactorings''}
+\tit{Safer Refactorings}\citing{stolzSaferRefactorings} is a proposal for a
+master's thesis. The proposer is my supervisor, Volker Stolz from the University
+of Oslo.
+
+The proposed solution for making refactorings safer, is to insert assertions
+into source code when refactoring it. For the example in
+\myref{lst:correctnessExtractAndMoveResult}, which is the result of a
+refactoring, it is suggested that we insert an assert statement between lines 9
+and 10. In this example, the assert statement
+would be \mint{java}|assert c.x == this;| which would discover the aliasing
+problems of this example.
+
+\subsubsection{``Making Program Refactoring Safer''}
+This is the name of an article\citing{soaresSafer2010} about providing a way to
+improve safety during refactoring. Soares et al. approaches the problem of
+preserving behavior during refactoring by analyzing a transformation and then
+generate a test suite for it, using static analysis. These tests are then run
+for both the before- and after-code, and is compared to assure that they are
+consistent.
+
+\subsection{Search-based refactoring}
+\tit{Search-Based Refactoring: an
+empirical study}\citing{okeeffeSearchBased2008} is a paper by Mark O'Keeffe and
+Mel Ó Cinnéide published in 2008. The authors present an empirical study of
+different algorithmic approaches to search-based refactoring.
+
+The common approach for all these algorithms is to generate a set of changes to
+a program for then to use a ``fitness function'' to evaluate if they improve its
+design or not. The fitness function consists of a weighted sum of different
+object-oriented metrics.
+
+Among other things, the authors conclude that even with small input programs,
+their solution representation is memory-intensive, at least for some algorithms.
+The programs they refactor on have in average 4,000 lines of code, spread over
+57 classes. I.e. considerably smaller than one of the programs that will be
+ subject to refactoring in this project.
+
+
+\subsection{The compositional paradigm of refactoring}
+This paradigm builds upon the observation of Vakilian et
+al.\citing{vakilian2012}, that of the many automated refactorings existing in
+modern IDEs, the simplest ones are dominating the usage statistics. The report
+mainly focuses on \name{Eclipse} as the tool under investigation.
-\section{Finding a move target}
-In the analysis needed to perform the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
-automatically, the selection we choose is found among all the selections that
-has a possible move target. Therefore, the best possible move target must be
-found for all the candidate selections, so that we are able to sort out the
-selection that is best suited for the refactoring.
+The paradigm is described almost as the opposite of automated composition of
+refactorings \see{compositeRefactorings}. It works by providing the programmer
+with easily accessible primitive refactorings. These refactorings shall be
+accessed via keyboard shortcuts or quick-assist menus\footnote{Think
+quick-assist with Ctrl+1 in \name{Eclipse}} and be promptly executed, opposed to in the
+currently dominating wizard-based refactoring paradigm. They are meant to
+stimulate composing smaller refactorings into more complex changes, rather than
+doing a large upfront configuration of a wizard-based refactoring, before
+previewing and executing it. The compositional paradigm of refactoring is
+supposed to give control back to the programmer, by supporting \himher with an
+option of performing small rapid changes instead of large changes with a lesser
+degree of control. The report authors hope this will lead to fewer unsuccessful
+refactorings. It also could lower the bar for understanding the steps of a
+larger composite refactoring and thus also help in figuring out what goes wrong
+if one should choose to op in on a wizard-based refactoring.
-To find the best move target for a specific text selection, we first need to
-find all the possible targets. Since the target must be a local variable or a
-field, we are basically looking for names within the selection; names that
-represents references to variables.
-
-The names we are looking for, we call prefixes. This is because we are not
-interested in names that occur in the middle of a dot-separated sequence of
-names. We are only interested in names that constitutes prefixes of other names,
-possibly themselves. The reason for this, is that two lexically equal names need
-not be referencing the same variable, if they themselves are not referenced via
-the same prefix. Consider the two method calls \code{a.x.foo()} and
-\code{b.x.foo()}. Here, the two references to \code{x}, in the middle of the
-qualified names both preceding \code{foo()}, are not referencing the same
-variable. Even though the variables may share the type, and the method
-\method{foo} thus is the same for both, we would not know through which of the
-variables \var{a} or \var{b} we should call the extracted method.
+Vakilian and his associates have performed a survey of the effectiveness of the
+compositional paradigm versus the wizard-based one. They claim to have found
+evidence of that the \emph{compositional paradigm} outperforms the
+\emph{wizard-based}. It does so by reducing automation, which seems
+counterintuitive. Therefore they ask the question ``What is an appropriate level
+of automation?'', and thus questions what they feel is a rush toward more
+automation in the software engineering community.
-The possible move targets are then the prefixes that are not among a subset of
-the prefixes that are not valid move targets \see{s:unfixes}. Also, prefixes
-that are just simple names, and have only one occurrence, are left out. This is
-because they are not going to have any positive effect on coupling between
-classes.
-For finding the best move target among these safe prefixes, a simple heuristic
-is used. It is as simple as choosing the prefix that is most frequently
-referenced within the selection.
-\section{Unfixes}\label{s:unfixes}
-The prefixes that are not valid as move targets are called unfixes.
+\chapter{The search-based Extract and Move Method
+refactoring}\label{ch:extractAndMoveMethod}
+In this chapter I will delve into the workings of the search-based
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring. We will see the choices it must make along
+the way and why it chooses a text selection as a candidate for refactoring or
+not.
-An unfix can be a name that is assigned to within a selection. The reason that
-this cannot be allowed, is that the result would be an assignment to the
-\type{this} keyword, which is not valid in Java \see{eclipse_bug_420726}.
+After defining some concepts, I will introduce an example that will be used
+throughout the chapter to illustrate how the refactoring works in some simple
+situations.
-Prefixes that originates from variable declarations within the same selection
-are also considered unfixes. This is because when a method is moved, it needs to
-be called through a variable. If this variable is also declared within the
-method that is to be moved, this obviously cannot be done.
+\section{The inputs to the refactoring}
+For executing an \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring, there are two simple
+requirements. The first thing the refactoring needs is a text selection, telling
+it what to extract. Its second requirement is a target for the subsequent move
+operation.
-Also considered as unfixes are variable references that are of types that are
-not suitable for moving methods to. This can either be because it is not
-physically possible to move a method to the desired class or that it will cause
-compilation errors by doing so.
+The extracted method must be called instead of the selection that makes up its
+body. Also, the method call has to be performed via a variable, since the method
+is not static. Therefore, the move target must be a variable in the scope of the
+extracted selection. The actual new location for the extracted method will be
+the class representing the type of the move target variable. But, since the
+method also must be called through a variable, it makes sense to define the move
+target to be either a local variable or a field in the scope of the text
+selection.
-If the type binding for a name is not resolved it is considered and unfix. The
-same applies to types that is only found in compiled code, so they have no
-underlying source that is accessible to us. (E.g. the \type{java.lang.String}
-class.)
+\section{Defining a text selection}
+A text selection, in our context, is very similar to what you think of when
+selecting a bit of text in your editor or other text processing tool with your
+mouse or keyboard. It is an abstract construct that is meant to capture which
+specific portion of text we are about to deal with.
+
+To be able to clearly reason about a text selection done to a portion of text in
+a computer file, which consists of pure text, we put up the following
+definition:
+
+\definition{A \emph{text selection} in a text file is defined by two
+non-negative integers, in addition to a reference to the file itself. The first
+integer is an offset into the file, while the second reference is the length of
+the text selection.}
+
+This means that the selected text consist of a number of characters equal to the
+length of the selection, where the first character is found at the specified
+offset.
+
+\section{Where we look for text selections}
+
+\subsection{Text selections are found in methods}
+The text selections we are interested in are those that surround program
+statements. Therefore, the place we look for selections that can form candidates
+for an execution of the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring, is within the body of
+a single method.
+
+\paragraph{On ignoring static methods}
+In this project we are not analyzing static methods for candidates to the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring. The reason for this is that in the cases
+where we want to perform the refactoring for a selection within a static method,
+the first step is to extract the selection into a new method. Hence this method
+also becomes static, since it must be possible to call it from a static context.
+It would then be difficult to move the method to another class, make it
+non-static and calling it through a variable. To avoid these obstacles, we
+simply ignore static methods.
+
+\begin{listing}[htb]
+\def\charwidth{5.8pt}
+\def\indent{2*\charwidth}
+\def\lineheight{\baselineskip}
+\def\mintedtop{2*\lineheight+5.8pt}
-Interfaces types are not suitable as targets. This is simply because interfaces
-in Java cannot contain methods with bodies. (This thesis does not deal with
-features of Java versions later than Java 7. Java 8 has interfaces with default
-implementations of methods.)
+\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, yscale=-1, xshift=3.8pt+\charwidth*31]
+ \tikzstyle{overlaybox}=[fill=lightgray,opacity=0.2]
+ % Level 1
+ \draw[overlaybox] (\indent,\mintedtop+\lineheight*4) rectangle
+ +(23*\charwidth,17*\lineheight);
+
+ % Level 2
+ \draw[overlaybox] (2*\indent,\mintedtop+5*\lineheight) rectangle
+ +(15*\charwidth,3*\lineheight);
+ \draw[overlaybox] (2*\indent,\mintedtop+15*\lineheight) rectangle
+ +(15*\charwidth,3*\lineheight);
+ \draw[overlaybox] (2*\indent,\mintedtop+19*\lineheight) rectangle
+ +(15*\charwidth,\lineheight);
+\end{tikzpicture}
+ \begin{multicols}{2}
+ \begin{minted}[linenos,frame=topline,label=Clean,framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
+class C {
+ A a; B b; boolean bool;
+
+ void method(int val) {
+ if (bool) {
+ a.foo();
+ a = new A();
+ a.bar();
+ }
-Neither are local types allowed. This accounts for both local and anonymous
-classes. Anonymous classes are effectively the same as interface types with
-respect to unfixes. Local classes could in theory be used as targets, but this
-is not possible due to limitations of the way the \refa{Extract and Move Method}
-refactoring has to be implemented. The problem is that the refactoring is done
-in two steps, so the intermediate state between the two refactorings would not
-be legal Java code. In the intermediate step for the case where a local class is
-the move target, the extracted method would need to take the local class as a
-parameter. This new method would need to live in the scope of the declaring
-class of the originating method. The local class would then not be in the scope
-of the extracted method, thus bringing the source code into an illegal state.
-One could imagine that the method was extracted and moved in one operation,
-without an intermediate state. Then it would make sense to include variables
-with types of local classes in the set of legal targets, since the local classes
-would then be in the scopes of the method calls. If this makes any difference
-for software metrics that measure coupling would be a different discussion.
+ a.foo();
+ a.bar();
-\begin{listing}
-\begin{multicols}{2}
-\begin{minted}[]{java}
-// Before
-void declaresLocalClass() {
- class LocalClass {
- void foo() {}
- void bar() {}
+ switch (val) {
+ case 1:
+ b.a.foo();
+ b.a.bar();
+ break;
+ default:
+ a.foo();
+ }
}
-
- LocalClass inst =
- new LocalClass();
- inst.foo();
- inst.bar();
}
\end{minted}
\columnbreak
-\begin{minted}[]{java}
-// After Extract Method
-void declaresLocalClass() {
- class LocalClass {
- void foo() {}
- void bar() {}
- }
+\begin{minted}[frame=topline,label={With statement
+ sequences},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
+class C {
+ A a; B b; boolean bool;
- LocalClass inst =
- new LocalClass();
- fooBar(inst);
-}
+ void method(int val) {
+ if (bool) {
+ a.foo();
+ a = new A();
+ a.bar();
+ }
-// Intermediate step
-void fooBar(LocalClass inst) {
- inst.foo();
- inst.bar();
+ a.foo();
+ a.bar();
+
+ switch (val) {
+ case 1:
+ b.a.foo();
+ b.a.bar();
+ break;
+ default:
+ a.foo();
+ }
+ }
}
\end{minted}
-\end{multicols}
-\caption{When the \refa{Extract and Move Method} tries to use a variable with a
-local type as the move target, an intermediate step is performed that is not
-allowed. Here: \type{LocalClass} is not in the scope of \method{fooBar} in its
-intermediate location.}
-\label{lst:extractMethod_LocalClass}
+
+ \end{multicols}
+\caption{Classes \type{A} and \type{B} are both public. The methods
+\method{foo} and \method{bar} are public members of class \type{A}.}
+\label{lst:grandExample}
\end{listing}
-The last class of names that are considered unfixes are names used in null
-tests. These are tests that reads like this: if \texttt{<name>} equals
-\var{null} then do something. If allowing variables used in those kinds of
-expressions as targets for moving methods, we would end up with code containing
-boolean expressions like \texttt{this == null}, which would not be meaningful,
-since \var{this} would never be \var{null}.
+\subsection{The possible text selections of a method body}
+The number of possible text selections that can be made from the text in a
+method body, are equal to all the sub-sequences of characters within it. For our
+purposes, analyzing program source code, we must define what it means for a text
+selection to be valid.
-\todoin{Describe what a text selection is?}
+\definition{A \emph{valid text selection} is a text selection that contains all
+of one or more consecutive program statements.}
-\section{Choosing the selection}
-When choosing a selection between the text selections that have possible move
-targets, the selections need to be ordered. The criteria below are presented in
-the order they are prioritized. If not one selection is favored over the other
-for a concrete criterion, the selections are evaluated by the next criterion.
+For a sequence of statements, the text selections that can be made from it, are
+equal to all its sub-sequences. \Myref{lst:textSelectionsExample} show an
+example of all the text selections that can be made from the code in
+\myref{lst:grandExample}, lines 16-18. For convenience and the clarity of this
+example, the text selections are represented as tuples with the start and end
+line of all selections: $\{(16), (17), (18), (16,17), (16,18), (17,18)\}$.
-\begin{enumerate}
- \item The first criterion that is evaluated is whether a selection contains
- any unfixes or not. If selection \m{A} contains no unfixes, while
- selection \m{B} does, selection \m{A} is favored over selection
- \m{B}. This is done under the assumption that, if possible, avoiding
- selections containing unfixes will make the code moved a little
- cleaner.\todoin{more arguments?}
-
- \item The second criterion that is evaluated is how many possible targets a
- selection contains. If selection \m{A} has only one possible target, and
- selection \m{B} has multiple, selection \m{A} is favored. If both
- selections have multiple possible targets, they are considered equal with
- respect to this criterion. The rationale for this heuristic is that we would
- prefer not to introduce new couplings between classes when performing the
- \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
-
- \item When evaluating the last criterion, this is with the knowledge that
- selection \m{A} and \m{B} both have one possible target. Then, if
- the move target candidate of selection \m{A} has a higher reference count
- than the target candidate of selection \m{B}, selection \m{A} is
- favored. The reason for this is that we would like to move the selection that
- gets rid of the most references to another class.
+\begin{listing}[htb]
+\def\charwidth{5.7pt}
+\def\indent{4*\charwidth}
+\def\lineheight{\baselineskip}
+\def\mintedtop{\lineheight-1pt}
-\end{enumerate}
+\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, yscale=-1]
+ \tikzstyle{overlaybox}=[fill=lightgray,opacity=0.2]
-If none of the above mentioned criteria favors one selection over another, the
-selections are considered to be equally good candidates for the
-\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+ % First statement
+ \draw[overlaybox] (2*\charwidth,\mintedtop) rectangle
+ +(16*\charwidth,\lineheight);
+
+ % Second statement
+ \draw[overlaybox] (2*\charwidth,\mintedtop+\lineheight) rectangle
+ +(16*\charwidth,\lineheight);
+
+ % Third statement
+ \draw[overlaybox] (2*\charwidth,\mintedtop+2*\lineheight) rectangle
+ +(16*\charwidth,\lineheight);
+
+ \draw[overlaybox] (\indent-3*\charwidth,\mintedtop) rectangle
+ +(18*\charwidth,2*\lineheight);
+
+ \draw[overlaybox] (3*\charwidth,\mintedtop+\lineheight) rectangle
+ +(14*\charwidth,2*\lineheight);
+
+ % All
+ \draw[overlaybox] (\indent,\mintedtop) rectangle
+ +(12*\charwidth,3*\lineheight);
+\end{tikzpicture}
+% indent should be 5 spaces
+\begin{minted}[linenos,firstnumber=16]{java}
+ b.a.foo();
+ b.a.bar();
+ break;
+\end{minted}
+\caption{Example of how the text selections generator would generate text
+ selections based on a lists of statements. Each highlighted rectangle
+represents a text selection.}
+\label{lst:textSelectionsExample}
+\end{listing}
+
+Each nesting level of a method body can have many such sequences of statements.
+The outermost nesting level has one such sequence, and each branch contains
+its own sequence of statements. \Myref{lst:grandExample} has a version of some
+code where all such sequences of statements are highlighted for a method body.
+
+To complete our example of possible text selections, I will now list all
+possible text selections for the method in \myref{lst:grandExample}, by nesting
+level. There are 23 of them in total.
+
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Level 1 (10 selections)] \hfill \\
+ $\{(5,9), (11), (12), (14,21), (5,11), (5,12), (5,21), (11,12),
+ (11,21), \\(12,21)\}$
+
+ \item[Level 2 (13 selections)] \hfill \\
+ $\{(6), (7), (8), (6,7), (6,8), (7,8), (16), (17), (18), (16,17), (16,18), \\
+ (17,18), (20)\}$
+\end{description}
+
+\subsubsection{The complexity}\label{sec:complexity}
+The complexity of how many text selections that need to be analyzed for a body
+of in total $n$ statements, is bounded by $O(n^2)$. A body of statements is here
+all the statements in all nesting levels of a sequence of statements. A method
+body (or a block) is a body of statements. To prove that the complexity is
+bounded by $O(n^2)$, I present a couple of theorems and prove them.
+
+\begin{theorem}
+The number of text selections that need to be analyzed for each list of
+statements of length $n$, is exactly
+
+\begin{equation*}
+ \sum_{i=1}^{n} i = \frac{n(n+1)}{2}
+ \label{eq:complexityStatementList}
+\end{equation*}
+\label{thm:numberOfTextSelection}
+\end{theorem}
+
+\begin{proof}
+ For $n=1$ this is trivial: $\frac{1(1+1)}{2} = \frac{2}{2} = 1$. One statement
+ equals one selection.
+
+ For $n=2$, you get one text selection for the first statement, one selection
+ for the second statement, and one selection for the two of them combined.
+ This equals three selections. $\frac{2(2+1)}{2} = \frac{6}{2} = 3$.
+
+ For $n=3$, you get 3 selections for the two first statements, as in the case
+ where $n=2$. In addition you get one selection for the third statement itself,
+ and two more statements for the combinations of it with the two previous
+ statements. This equals six selections. $\frac{3(3+1)}{2} = \frac{12}{2} = 6$.
+
+ Assume that for $n=k$ there exists $\frac{k(k+1)}{2}$ text selections. Then we
+ want to add selections for another statement, following the previous $k$
+ statements. So, for $n=k+1$, we get one additional selection for the statement
+ itself. Then we get one selection for each pair of the new selection and the
+ previous $k$ statements. So the total number of selections will be the number
+ of already generated selections, plus $k$ for every pair, plus one for the
+ statement itself: $\frac{k(k+1)}{2} + k +
+ 1 = \frac{k(k+1)+2k+2}{2} = \frac{k(k+1)+2(k+1)}{2} = \frac{(k+1)(k+2)}{2} =
+ \frac{(k+1)((k+1)+1)}{2} = \sum_{i=1}^{k+1} i$
+\end{proof}
+
+%\definition{A \emph{body of statements} is a sequence of statements where every
+%statement may have sub-statements.}
+
+\begin{theorem}
+ The number of text selections for a body of statements is maximized if all the
+ statements are at the same level.
+ \label{thm:textSelectionsMaximized}
+\end{theorem}
+
+\begin{proof}
+ Assume we have a body of, in total, $k$ statements. Then, the sum of the
+ lengths of all the lists of statements in the body, is also $k$. Let
+ $\{l,\ldots,m,(k-l-\ldots-m)\}$ be the lengths of the lists of statements in
+ the body, with $l+\ldots+m<k \Rightarrow \forall i \in \{l,\ldots,m\} : i < k$.
+
+ Then, the number of text selections that are generated for the $k$ statements
+ is
+
+ {
+ \small
+ \begin{align*}
+ \frac{l(l+1)}{2} + \ldots + \frac{m(m+1)}{2} +
+ \frac{(k-l-\ldots-m)((k-l-\ldots-m)+ 1)}{2} = \\
+ \frac{l^2+l}{2} + \ldots + \frac{m^2+m}{2} + \frac{k^2 - 2kl - \ldots - 2km +
+ l^2 + \ldots + m^2 + k - l - \ldots - m}{2} = \\
+ \frac{2l^2 - 2kl + \ldots + 2m^2 - 2km + k^2 + k}{2}
+ \end{align*}
+ }
+
+ \noindent It then remains to show that this inequality holds:
+
+ \begin{align*}
+ \frac{2l^2 - 2kl + \ldots + 2m^2 - 2km + k^2 + k}{2} < \frac{k(k+1)}{2} =
+ \frac{k^2 + k}{2}
+ \end{align*}
+
+ \noindent By multiplication by $2$ on both sides, and by removing the equal
+ parts, we get
+
+ \begin{align*}
+ 2l^2 - 2kl + \ldots + 2m^2 - 2km < 0
+ \end{align*}
+
+ Since $\forall i \in \{l,\ldots,m\} : i < k$, we have that $\forall i \in
+ \{l,\ldots,m\} : 2ki > 2i^2$, so all the pairs of parts on the form $2i^2-2ki$
+ are negative. In sum, the inequality holds.
+
+\end{proof}
+
+Therefore, the complexity for the number of selections that need to be analyzed
+for a body of $n$ statements is $O\bigl(\frac{n(n+1)}{2}\bigr) = O(n^2)$.
\section{Disqualifying a selection}
Certain text selections would lead to broken code if used as input to the
\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring. To avoid this, we have to check all text
-selections for such conditions before they are further analyzed. This sections
-is therefore going to present some properties that makes a selection unsuitable
-for our refactoring.
+selections for such conditions before they are further analyzed. This section
+is therefore going to present some properties that make a selection unsuitable
+for our refactoring. When analyzing all these properties, it is assumed that the
+source code does not contain any compilation errors.
\subsection{A call to a protected or package-private method}
-If a text selection contains such a call, it would not be safe to move it to
-another class. The reason for this, is that we cannot know if the called method
-is being overridden by some subclass of the \gloss{enclosingClass}, or not.
+If a text selection contains a call to a protected or package-private method, it
+would not be safe to move it to another class. The reason for this, is that we
+cannot know if the called method is being overridden by some subclass of the
+\gloss{enclosingClass}, or not.
Imagine that the protected method \method{foo} is declared in class \m{A},
and overridden in class \m{B}. The method \method{foo} is called from within a
selection done to a method in \m{A}. We want to extract and move this selection
to another class. The method \method{foo} is not public, so the \MoveMethod
refactoring must make it public, making the extracted method able to call it
-from the extracted method's new location. The problem is that the, now public,
+from the extracted method's new location. The problem is, that the now public
method \method{foo} is overridden in a subclass, where it has a protected
status. This makes the compiler complain that the subclass \m{B} is trying to
reduce the visibility of a method declared in its superclass \m{A}. This is not
-allowed in Java, and for good reasons. It would make it possible to make a
+allowed in Java, and for good reasons. It would make it possible to make a
subclass that could not be a substitute for its superclass.
-\todoin{Code example?}
+
+The problem this check helps to avoid, is a little subtle. The problem does not
+arise in the class where the change is done, but in a class derived from it.
+This shows that classes acting as superclasses are especially fragile to
+introducing errors in the context of automated refactoring.
+\begin{comment}
+This is also shown in bug\ldots \todoin{File Eclipse bug report}
+\end{comment}
+
+\subsection{A double class instance creation}
+The following is a problem caused solely by the underlying \MoveMethod
+refactoring. The problem occurs if two classes are instantiated such that the
+first constructor invocation is an argument to a second, and that the first
+constructor invocation takes an argument that is built up using a field. As an
+example, say that \var{name} is a field of the enclosing class, and we have the
+expression \code{new A(new B(name))}. If this expression is located in a
+selection that is moved to another class, \var{name} will be left untouched,
+instead of being prefixed with a variable of the same type as it is declared in.
+If \var{name} is the destination for the move, it is not replaced by
+\code{this}, or removed if it is a prefix to a member access
+(\code{name.member}), but it is still left by itself.
+
+Situations like this would lead to code that will not compile. Therefore, we
+have to avoid them by not allowing selections to contain such double class
+instance creations that also contain references to fields.
+\begin{comment}
+\todoin{File Eclipse bug report}
+\end{comment}
\subsection{Instantiation of non-static inner class}
When a non-static inner class is instantiated, this must happen in the scope of
Performing a move on a method that instantiates a non-static inner class, will
break the code if the instantiation is not handled properly. For this reason,
-selections that contains instantiations of non-static inner classes are deemed
+selections that contain instantiations of non-static inner classes are deemed
unsuitable for the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
\subsection{References to enclosing instances of the enclosing class}
-The title of this section may be a little hard to grasp at first. What it means
-is that there is a (non-static) class \m{C} that is declared in the scope of
-possibly multiple other classes. And there is a statement in a method declared
-in class \m{C} that contains a reference to one or more instances of these
-enclosing classes of \m{C}.
+To ``reference an enclosing instance of the enclosing class'' is to reference
+another instance than the one for the immediately enclosing class. Imagine there
+is a (non-static) class \m{C} that is declared in the inner scope of another
+class. That class can again be nested inside a third class, and so on. Hence,
+the nested class \m{C} can have access to many enclosing instances of its
+innermost enclosing class. A selection in a method declared in class \m{C} is
+disqualified if it contains a statement that contains a reference to one or more
+instances of these enclosing classes of \m{C}.
The problem with this, is that these references may not be valid if they are
moved to another class. Theoretically, some situations could easily be solved by
passing, to the moved method, a reference to the instance where the problematic
-referenced member is declared, in the case where this member is public. This is
-not done in the underlying \MoveMethod refactoring, so it cannot be allowed in
-the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring either.
+referenced member is declared. This should work in the case where this member is
+publicly accessible. This is not done in the underlying \MoveMethod refactoring,
+so it cannot be allowed in the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring either.
\subsection{Inconsistent return statements}
To verify that a text selection is consistent with respect to return statements,
return type, then a call to it would also be a valid return point for the
calling method. If its return value is of the void type, then the \ExtractMethod
refactoring will append an empty return statement to the back of the method
-call. Therefore, the analysis does not discriminate on either kinds of return
+call. Therefore, the analysis does not discriminate on either kind of return
statements, with or without a return value.
-A throw statement is accepted anywhere a return statement is required. This is
-because a throw statement causes an immediate exit from the current block,
-together with all outer blocks in its control flow that does not catch the
-thrown exception.
-
-Return statements can be either explicit or implicit. An \emph{explicit} return
-statement is formed by using the \code{return} keyword, while an \emph{implicit}
-return statement is a statement that is not formed using \code{return} keyword,
-but must be the last statement of a method that can have any side effects. This
-can happen in methods with a void return type. An example is a statement that is
-inside one or more blocks. The last statement of a method could for instance be
-a synchronized statement, but the last statement that is executed in the method,
-and that can have any side effects, may be located inside the body of the
-synchronized statement.
+A \emph{throw} statement is accepted anywhere a return statement is required.
+This is because a throw statement causes an immediate exit from the current
+block, together with all outer blocks in its control flow that does not catch
+the thrown exception.
+
+We separate between explicit and implicit return statements. An \emph{explicit}
+return statement is formed by using the \code{return} keyword, while an
+\emph{implicit} return statement is a statement that is not formed using
+\code{return}, but must be the last statement of a method that can have any side
+effects. This can happen in methods with a void return type. An example is a
+statement that is inside one or more blocks. The last statement of a method
+could for instance be a synchronized statement, but the last statement that is
+executed in the method, and that can have any side effects, may be located
+inside the body of the synchronized statement.
We can start the check for this property by looking at the last statement of a
-selection to see if it is a return statement (explicit or implicit) or a
-throw statement. If it is, then the property holds, assuming the selected code
-does not contain any compilation errors.
-\todoin{State somewhere that we assume no compilation errors?}
-
-If the last statement of the selection is not a return or throw, the execution
-of it must end in one. This means that all branches of the last statement of
-every branch must end in a return or throw. Given this recursive definition,
+selection to see if it is a return statement (explicit or implicit) or a throw
+statement. If this is the case, then the property holds, assuming the selected
+code do not contain any compilation errors. All execution paths within the
+selection should end in either this, or another, return or throw statement.
+
+If the last statement of the selection is not a \emph{return} or \emph{throw},
+the execution of it must eventually end in one of these types of statements for
+the selection to be legal. This means that all branches of the last statement of
+every branch must end in a return or throw. Given this recursive definition,
there are only five types of statements that are guaranteed to end in a return
-or throw if their child branches does. All other statements would have to be
-considered illegal. The first three, block-statements, labeled statements and
-do-statements are all kinds of fall-through statements that always gets their
-body executed. Do-statements would not make much sense if written such that they
-always ends after the first round of execution of their body, but that is not
-our concern. The remaining two statements that can end in a return or throw are
+or throw if their child branches do. All other statements would have to be
+considered illegal. The first three: Block-statements, labeled statements and
+do-statements are all kinds of fall-through statements that always get their
+body executed. Do-statements would not make much sense if written such that they
+always end after the first round of execution of their body, but that is not our
+concern. The remaining two statements that can end in a return or throw are
if-statements and try-statements.
For an if-statement, the rule is that if its then-part does not contain any
-return or throw statements, it is considered illegal. If the then-part does
+return or throw statements, this is considered illegal. If the then-part does
contain a return or throw, the else-part is checked. If its else-part is
non-existent, or it does not contain any return or throw statements, the
statement is considered illegal. If an if-statement is not considered illegal,
-the bodies of its parts must be checked.
+the bodies of its two parts must be checked.
Try-statements are handled much the same way as if-statements. The body of a
try-statement must contain a return or throw. The same applies to its catch
-clauses and finally body.
+clauses and finally body. \todoin{finally body?}
\subsection{Ambiguous return values}
-The problem with ambiguous return values arise when a selection is chosen to be
-extracted into a new method, but it needs to return more than one value from
-that method.
+The problem with ambiguous return values arises when a selection is chosen to be
+extracted into a new method, but if refactored it needs to return more than one
+value from that method.
-This problem occurs in two situations. The first situation arise when there is
+This problem occurs in two situations. The first situation arises when there is
more than one local variable that is both assigned to within a selection and
-also referenced after the selection. The other situation occur when there is
+also referenced after the selection. The other situation occurs when there is
only one such assignment, but the selection also contain return statements.
Therefore we must examine the selection for assignments to local variables that
\subsection{Illegal statements}
An illegal statement may be a statement that is of a type that is never allowed,
-or it may be a statement that is only allowed if certain conditions are true.
+or it may be a statement of a type that is only allowed if certain conditions
+are true.
Any use of the \var{super} keyword is prohibited, since its meaning is altered
when moving a method to another class.
to non-final variables and assignments to array access. All other assignments
are regarded illegal.
-\todoin{Expand with more illegal statements and/or conclude that I did not have
-time to analyze all statements types.}
+\paragraph{Incompleteness.} The list of illegal statements is not complete, and
+a lot of situations that can lead to compilation errors or behavior changes are
+not considered. It is not feasible to consider all such situations within the
+limits of this master's project, and maybe not outside of them either. The
+feasibility of this problem could be explored further by others.
+\section{Disqualifying selections from the
+example}\label{sec:disqualifyingExample}
+Among the selections we found for the code in \myref{lst:grandExample}, not many
+of them must be disqualified on the basis of containing something illegal. The
+only statement causing trouble is the break statement in line 18. None of the
+selections on nesting level 2 can contain this break statement, since the
+innermost switch statement is not inside any of these selections.
+This means that the text selections $(18)$, $(16,18)$ and $(17,18)$ can be
+excluded from further consideration, and we are left with the following
+selections.
-\chapter{Refactorings in Eclipse JDT: Design, Shortcomings and Wishful
-Thinking}\label{ch:jdt_refactorings}
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Level 1 (10 selections)] \hfill \\
+ $\{(5,9), (11), (12), (14,21), (5,11), (5,12), (5,21), (11,12),
+ (11,21), \\(12,21)\}$
-This chapter will deal with some of the design behind refactoring support in
-\name{Eclipse}, and the JDT in specific. After which it will follow a section about
-shortcomings of the refactoring API in terms of composition of refactorings. The
-chapter will be concluded with a section telling some of the ways the
-implementation of refactorings in the JDT could have worked to facilitate
-composition of refactorings.
+ \item[Level 2 (10 selections)] \hfill \\
+ $\{(6), (7), (8), (6,7), (6,8), (7,8), (16), (17), (16,17), (20)\}$
+\end{description}
-\section{Design}
-The refactoring world of \name{Eclipse} can in general be separated into two parts: The
-language independent part and the part written for a specific programming
-language -- the language that is the target of the supported refactorings.
-\todo{What about the language specific part?}
+\section{Finding a move target}
+In the analysis needed to perform the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+automatically, the selection we choose is found among all the selections that
+have a possible move target. Therefore, the best possible move target must be
+found for all the candidate selections, so that we are able to sort out the
+selection that is best suited for the refactoring.
-\subsection{The Language Toolkit}
-The Language Toolkit\footnote{The content of this section is a mixture of
- written material from
- \url{https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-LTK/ltk.html} and
- \url{http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Unleashing-the-Power-of-Refactoring/index.html},
-the LTK source code and my own memory.}, or LTK for short, is the framework that
-is used to implement refactorings in \name{Eclipse}. It is language independent and
-provides the abstractions of a refactoring and the change it generates, in the
-form of the classes \typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring}{Refactoring}
-and \typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring}{Change}.
+To find the best move target for a specific text selection, we first need to
+find all the possible targets. Since the target must be a local variable or a
+field, we are basically looking for names within the selection; names that
+represents references to variables.
-There are also parts of the LTK that is concerned with user interaction, but
+The names we are looking for, we call prefixes. This is because we are not
+interested in names that occur in the middle of a dot-separated sequence of
+names. We are only interested in names constituting prefixes of other names, and
+possibly themselves. The reason for this, is that two lexically equal names need
+not be referencing the same variable, if they themselves are not referenced via
+the same prefix. Consider the two method calls \code{a.x.foo()} and
+\code{b.x.foo()}. Here, the two references to \code{x}, in the middle of the
+qualified names both preceding \code{foo()}, are not referencing the same
+variable. Even though the variables may share the type, and the method
+\method{foo} thus is the same for both, we would not know through which of the
+variables \var{a} or \var{b} we should call the extracted method.
+
+The possible move targets are then the prefixes that are not among a subset of
+the prefixes that are not valid move targets \see{s:unfixes}. Also, prefixes
+that are just simple names, and have only one occurrence, are left out. This is
+because they are not going to have any positive effect on coupling between
+classes, and are only going to increase the complexity of the code.
+
+For finding the best move target among these safe prefixes, a simple heuristic
+is used. It is as simple as choosing the prefix that is most frequently
+referenced within the selection.
+
+\section{Unfixes}\label{s:unfixes}
+We will call the prefixes that are not valid as move targets for unfixes.
+
+A name that is assigned to within a selection can be an unfix. The reason for
+this is that the result would be an assignment to the \type{this} keyword, which
+is not valid in Java \see{eclipse_bug_420726}.
+
+Prefixes that originate from variable declarations within the same selection are
+also considered unfixes. The reason for this is that when a method is moved, it
+needs to be called through a variable. If this variable is also declared within
+the method that is to be moved, this obviously cannot be done.
+
+Also considered as unfixes are variable references that are of types that are
+not suitable for moving methods to. This can either be because it is not
+physically possible to move a method to the desired class or that it will cause
+compilation errors by doing so.
+
+If the type binding for a name is not resolved it is considered an unfix. The
+same applies to types that are only found in compiled code, so they have no
+underlying source that is accessible to us. (E.g. the \type{java.lang.String}
+class.)
+
+Interface types are not suitable as targets. This is simply because interfaces
+in Java cannot contain methods with bodies. (This thesis does not deal with
+features of Java versions later than Java 7. Java 8 has interfaces with default
+implementations of methods.)
+
+Neither are local types allowed. This accounts for both local and anonymous
+classes. Anonymous classes are effectively the same as interface types with
+respect to unfixes. Local classes could in theory be used as targets, but this
+is not possible due to limitations of the way the \refa{Extract and Move Method}
+refactoring has to be implemented. The problem is that the refactoring is done
+in two steps, so the intermediate state between the two refactorings would not
+be legal Java code. In the intermediate step for the case where a local class is
+the move target, the extracted method would need to take the local class as a
+parameter. This new method would need to live in the scope of the declaring
+class of the originating method. The local class would then not be in the scope
+of the extracted method, thus bringing the source code into an illegal state.
+This scenario is shown in \myref{lst:extractMethodLocalClass}. One could imagine
+that the method was extracted and moved in one operation, without an
+intermediate state. Then it would make sense to include variables with types of
+local classes in the set of legal targets, since the local classes would then be
+in the scopes of the method calls. If this makes any difference for software
+metrics that measure coupling would be a different discussion.
+
+\todoin{highlight code!}
+
+\begin{listing}[htb]
+\begin{multicols}{2}
+\begin{minted}[frame=topline,label=Before,framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
+void declaresLocalClass() {
+ class LocalClass {
+ void foo() {}
+ void bar() {}
+ }
+
+ LocalClass inst =
+ new LocalClass();
+ inst.foo();
+ inst.bar();
+}
+\end{minted}
+
+\columnbreak
+
+\begin{minted}[frame=topline,label={After Extract
+ Method},framesep=\mintedframesep]{java}
+void declaresLocalClass() {
+ class LocalClass {
+ void foo() {}
+ void bar() {}
+ }
+
+ LocalClass inst =
+ new LocalClass();
+ fooBar(inst);
+}
+
+// Illegal intermediate step
+void fooBar(LocalClass inst) {
+ inst.foo();
+ inst.bar();
+}
+\end{minted}
+\end{multicols}
+\caption{The \refa{Extract and Move Method} refactoring bringing the code into
+an illegal state with an intermediate step.}
+\label{lst:extractMethodLocalClass}
+\end{listing}
+
+The last class of names that are considered unfixes are names used in null
+tests. These are tests that read like this: if \code{<name>} equals \var{null}
+then do something. If allowing variables used in those kinds of expressions as
+targets for moving methods, we would end up with code containing boolean
+expressions like \code{this == null}, which would always evaluate to
+\code{false}, since \var{this} would never be \var{null}. The existence of a
+null test indicates that a variable is expected to sometimes hold the value
+\var{null}. By using a variable used in a null test as a move target, we could
+potentially end up with a
+null pointer exception if the method is called on a variable with a null value.
+
+\section{Finding the example selections that have possible targets}
+We now pick up the thread from \myref{sec:disqualifyingExample} where we have a
+set of text selections that need to be analyzed to find out if some of them are
+suitable targets for the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+
+We start by analyzing the text selections for nesting level 2, because these
+results can be used to reason about the selections for nesting level 1. First we
+have all the single-statement selections.
+
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Selections $(6)$, $(8)$ and $(20)$.] \hfill \\
+ All these selections have a prefix that contains a possible target, namely
+ the variable \var{a}. The problem is that the prefixes are only one segment
+ long, and their frequency counts are only 1 as well. None of these
+ selections are therefore considered as suitable candidates for the
+ refactoring.
+
+ \item[Selection $(7)$.] \hfill \\
+ This selection contains the unfix \var{a}, and no other possible targets.
+ The reason for \var{a} being an unfix is that it is assigned to within the
+ selection. Selection $(7)$ is therefore unsuited as a refactoring candidate.
+
+ \item[Selections $(16)$ and $(17)$.] \hfill \\
+ These selections both have a possible target. The target for both selections
+ is the variable \var{b}. Both the prefixes have frequency 1. We denote this
+ with the new tuples $((16), \texttt{b.a}, f(1))$ and $((17), \texttt{b.a},
+ f(1))$. They contain the selection, the prefix with the target and the
+ frequency for this prefix.
+
+\end{description}
+
+Then we have all the text selections from level 2 that are composed of multiple
+statements:
+
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Selections $(6,7)$, $(6,8)$ and $(7,8)$.] \hfill \\
+ All these selections are disqualified for the reason that they contain the
+ unfix \var{a}, due to the assignment, and no other possible move targets.
+
+ \item[Selection $(16,17)$.] \hfill \\
+ This selection is the last selection that is not analyzed on nesting level
+ 2. It contains only one possible move target, and that is the variable
+ \var{b}. It also contains only one prefix \var{b.a}, with frequency count
+ 2. Therefore we have a new candidate $((16,17), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$.
+
+\end{description}
+
+Moving on to the text selections for nesting level 1, starting with the
+single-statement selections:
+
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Selection $(5,9)$.] \hfill \\
+ This selection contains two variable references that must be analyzed to see
+ if they are possible move candidates. The first one is the variable
+ \var{bool}. This variable is of type \type{boolean}, which is a primary type
+ and therefore not possible to make any changes to. The second variable is
+ \var{a}. The variable \var{a} is an unfix in $(5,9)$, for the same reason as
+ in the selections $(6,7)$, $(7,8)$ and $(6,8)$. So selection $(5,9)$
+ contains no possible move targets.
+
+ \item[Selections $(11)$ and $(12)$.] \hfill \\
+ These selections are disqualified for the same reasons as selections $(6)$
+ and $(8)$. Their prefixes are one segment long and are referenced only one
+ time.
+
+ \item[Selection $(14,21)$] \hfill \\
+ This is the switch statement from \myref{lst:grandExample}. It contains the
+ relevant variable references \var{val}, \var{a} and \var{b}. The variable
+ \var{val} is a primary type, just as \var{bool}. The variable \var{a} is
+ only found in one statement, and in a prefix with only one segment, so it is
+ not considered to be a possible move target. The only variable left is
+ \var{b}. Just as in the selection $(16,17)$, \var{b} is part of the prefix
+ \code{b.a}, which has 2 appearances. We have found a new candidate
+ $((14,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$.
+
+\end{description}
+
+It remains to see if we get any new candidates by analyzing the multi-statement
+text selections for nesting level 1:
+
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Selections $(5,11)$ and $(5,12)$.] \hfill \\
+ These selections are disqualified for the same reason as $(5,9)$. The only
+ possible move target \var{a} is an unfix.
+
+ \item[Selection $(5,21)$.] \hfill \\
+ This is whole of the method body in \myref{lst:grandExample}. The variables
+ \var{a}, \var{bool} and \var{val} are either an unfix or primary types. The
+ variable \var{b} is the only possible move target, and we have, again, the
+ prefix \code{b.a} as the center of attention. The refactoring candidate is
+ $((5,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$.
+
+ \item[Selection $(11,12)$.] \hfill \\
+ This small selection contains the prefix \code{a} with frequency 2, and no
+ unfixes. The candidate is $((11,12), \texttt{a}, f(2))$.
+
+ \item[Selection $(11,21)$] \hfill \\
+ This selection contains the selection $(11,12)$ in addition to the switch
+ statement. The selection has two possible move targets. The first one is
+ \var{b}, in a prefix with frequency 2. The second is \var{a}, although it
+ is in a simple prefix, it is referenced 3 times, and is therefore chosen
+ as the target for the selection. The new candidate is $((11,21),
+ \texttt{a}, f(3))$.
+
+ \item[Selection $(12,21)$.] \hfill \\
+ This selection is similar to the previous $(11,21)$, only that \var{a} now
+ has frequency count 2. This means that the prefixes \code{a} and
+ \code{b.a} both have the count 2. Of the two, \code{b.a} is preferred,
+ since it has more segments than \code{a}. Thus the candidate for this
+ selection is $((12,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$.
+
+\end{description}
+
+For the method in \myref{lst:grandExample} we therefore have the following 8
+candidates for the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring: $\{((16), \texttt{b.a},
+f(1)), ((17), \texttt{b.a}, f(1)), ((16,17), \texttt{b.a}, f(2)), ((14,21),
+\texttt{b.a}, f(2)), \\ ((5,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2)), ((11,12), \texttt{a},
+f(2)), ((11,21), \texttt{a}, f(3)), ((12,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))\}$.
+
+It now only remains to specify an order for these candidates, so we can choose
+the most suitable one to refactor.
+
+
+\section{Choosing the selection}\label{sec:choosingSelection}
+When choosing a selection between the text selections that have possible move
+targets, the selections need to be ordered. The criteria below are presented in
+the order they are prioritized. If not one selection is favored over the other
+for a concrete criterion, the selections are evaluated by the next criterion.
+
+\begin{enumerate}
+ \item The first criterion that is evaluated is whether a selection contains
+ any unfixes or not. If selection \m{A} contains no unfixes, while selection
+ \m{B} does, selection \m{A} is favored over selection \m{B}. This is
+ because, if we can, we want to avoid moving such as assignments and variable
+ declarations. This is done under the assumption that, if possible, avoiding
+ selections containing unfixes will make the code moved a little cleaner.
+
+ \item The second criterion that is evaluated is whether a selection contains
+ multiple possible targets or not. If selection \m{A} has only one possible
+ target, and selection \m{B} has multiple, selection \m{A} is favored. If
+ both selections have multiple possible targets, they are considered equal
+ with respect to this criterion. The rationale for this heuristic is that we
+ would prefer not to introduce new couplings between classes when performing
+ the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+
+ \item When evaluating this criterion, this is with the knowledge that
+ selection \m{A} and \m{B} both have one possible target, or multiple
+ possible targets. Then, if the move target candidate of selection \m{A} has
+ a higher reference count than the target candidate of selection \m{B},
+ selection \m{A} is favored. The reason for this is that we would like to
+ move the selection that gets rid of the most references to another class.
+
+ \item The last criterion is that if the frequencies of the targets chosen for
+ both selections are equal, the selection with the target that is part of the
+ prefix with highest number of segments is favored. This is done to favor
+ indirection.
+
+\end{enumerate}
+
+If none of the above mentioned criteria favors one selection over another, the
+selections are considered to be equally good candidates for the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+
+\section{Performing changes}
+When a text selection and a move target is found for the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring, the actual changes are executed by two existing primitive
+refactorings. First the \ExtractMethod refactoring is used to extract the
+selection into a new method. Then the \MoveMethod refactoring is used to move
+that new method to the class determined by the move target.
+
+If, at any point, an exception is thrown or the preconditions for one of the
+primitive refactorings are not satisfied, the composite refactoring is aborted,
+and the source code is left in its current state. This has the implication that
+the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring could end up being partially executed.
+This happens if the \ExtractMethod refactoring is executed, but the \MoveMethod
+refactoring is being canceled. A partial execution is not considered a problem,
+since the code should still compile.
+
+\todoin{Pointing to implementation chapter}
+
+\section{Concluding the example}
+For choosing one of the remaining selections, we need to order our candidates
+after the criteria in the previous section. Below we have the candidates ordered
+in descending order, with the ``best'' candidate first:
+
+\begin{multicols}{2}
+\begin{enumerate}
+ \item $((16,17), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$
+ \item $((11,12), \texttt{a}, f(2))$
+ \item $((16), \texttt{b.a}, f(1))$
+ \item $((17), \texttt{b.a}, f(1))$
+
+ % With unfixes:
+ % Many possible targets
+ \item $((11,21), \texttt{a}, f(3))$
+ \item $((5,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$
+ \item $((12,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$
+ \item $((14,21), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$
+
+\end{enumerate}
+\end{multicols}
+
+\begin{comment}
+5 if (bool) {
+6 a.foo();
+7 a = new A();
+8 a.bar();
+9 }
+10
+11 a.foo();
+12 a.bar();
+13
+14 switch (val) {
+15 case 1:
+16 b.a.foo();
+17 b.a.bar();
+18 break;
+19 default:
+20 a.foo();
+21 }
+\end{comment}
+
+The candidates ordered 5-8 all have unfixes in them, therefore they are ordered
+last. None of the candidates ordered 1-4 have multiple possible targets. The
+only interesting discussion is now why $(16,17)$ was favored over $(11,12)$.
+This is because the prefix \code{b.a} enclosing the move target of selection
+$(16,17)$ has one more segment than the prefix \code{a} of $(11,12)$.
+
+The selection is now extracted into a new method \method{gen\_123} and then
+moved to class \type{B}, since that is the type of the variable \var{b} that is
+the target from the chosen refactoring candidate. The name of the method has a
+randomly generated suffix. In the refactoring implementation, the extracted
+methods follow the pattern \code{generated\_<long>}, where \code{<long>} is a
+pseudo-random long value. This is shortened here to make the example readable.
+The result after the refactoring is shown in \myref{lst:grandExampleResult}.
+
+\begin{listing}[htb]
+ \begin{multicols}{2}
+ \begin{minted}[linenos]{java}
+class C {
+ A a; B b; boolean bool;
+
+ void method(int val) {
+ if (bool) {
+ a.foo();
+ a = new A();
+ a.bar();
+ }
+
+ a.foo();
+ a.bar();
+
+ switch (val) {
+ case 1:
+ b.gen_123(this);
+ break;
+ default:
+ a.foo();
+ }
+ }
+}
+\end{minted}
+
+\columnbreak
+
+ \begin{minted}[]{java}
+public class B {
+ A a;
+
+ public void gen_123(C c) {
+ a.foo();
+ a.bar();
+ }
+}
+\end{minted}
+
+ \end{multicols}
+ \caption{The result after refactoring the class \type{C} of
+ \myref{lst:grandExample} with the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring with
+ $((16,17), \texttt{b.a}, f(2))$ as input.}
+\label{lst:grandExampleResult}
+\end{listing}
+
+
+\chapter{Refactorings in Eclipse JDT: Design and
+shortcomings}\label{ch:jdt_refactorings}
+
+This chapter will deal with some of the design behind refactoring support in
+\name{Eclipse}, and the JDT in specific. After which it will follow a section
+about shortcomings of the refactoring API in terms of composition of
+refactorings.
+
+\section{Design}
+The refactoring world of \name{Eclipse} can in general be separated into two parts: The
+language independent part and the part written for a specific programming
+language -- the language that is the target of the supported refactorings.
+\todo{What about the language specific part?}
+
+\subsection{The Language Toolkit}
+The Language Toolkit\footnote{The content of this section is a mixture of
+ written material from
+ \url{https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-LTK/ltk.html} and
+ \url{http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Unleashing-the-Power-of-Refactoring/index.html},
+the LTK source code and my own memory.}, or LTK for short, is the framework that
+is used to implement refactorings in \name{Eclipse}. It is language independent and
+provides the abstractions of a refactoring and the change it generates, in the
+form of the classes \typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring}{Refactoring}
+and \typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring}{Change}.
+
+There are also parts of the LTK that is concerned with user interaction, but
they will not be discussed here, since they are of little value to us and our
use of the framework. We are primarily interested in the parts that can be
automated.
\subsubsection{The Refactoring Class}
The abstract class \type{Refactoring} is the core of the LTK framework. Every
-refactoring that is going to be supported by the LTK have to end up creating an
+refactoring that is going to be supported by the LTK has to end up creating an
instance of one of its subclasses. The main responsibilities of subclasses of
-\type{Refactoring} is to implement template methods for condition checking
+\type{Refactoring} are to implement template methods for condition checking
(\methodwithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring.Refactoring}{checkInitialConditions}
and
\methodwithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring.Refactoring}{checkFinalConditions}),
It then delegates to its given
\typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring.participants}{RefactoringProcessor}
for condition checking and change creation. Participating in a refactoring can
-be useful in cases where the changes done to programming source code affects
+be useful in cases where the changes done to programming source code affect
other related resources in the workspace. This can be names or paths in
configuration files, or maybe one would like to perform additional logging of
changes done in the workspace.
\subsubsection{The Change Class}
This class is the base class for objects that is responsible for performing the
actual workspace transformations in a refactoring. The main responsibilities for
-its subclasses is to implement the
+its subclasses are to implement the
\methodwithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring.Change}{perform} and
\methodwithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring.Change}{isValid} methods. The
\method{isValid} method verifies that the change object is valid and thus can be
I will begin at the end and work my way toward the composition part of this
section.
-\subsection{Absence of Generics in Eclipse Source Code}
+\subsection{Absence of generics in Eclipse source code}
This section is not only concerning the JDT refactoring API, but also large
quantities of the \name{Eclipse} source code. The code shows a striking absence of the
Java language feature of generics. It is hard to read a class' interface when
addition, it results in a lot of ugly code, making the use of typecasting more
of a rule than an exception.
-\subsection{Composite Refactorings Will Not Appear as Atomic Actions}
+\subsection{Composite refactorings will not appear as atomic actions}
+When composing primitive refactorings from the JDT, it is not possible to make
+them appear as being executed as one change, but only as multiple small changes.
\subsubsection{Missing Flexibility from JDT Refactorings}
The JDT refactorings are not made with composition of refactorings in mind. When
sequence. This problem is not trivial to handle in \name{Eclipse}
\see{hacking_undo_history}.
-\section{Wishful Thinking}
-\todoin{???}
-\chapter{Composite Refactorings in Eclipse}
+\chapter{Composite refactorings in Eclipse}
-\section{A Simple Ad Hoc Model}
+\section{A simple ad hoc model}
As pointed out in \myref{ch:jdt_refactorings}, the \name{Eclipse} JDT refactoring model
is not very well suited for making composite refactorings. Therefore a simple
model using changer objects (of type \type{RefaktorChanger}) is used as an
preconditions validate, the upcoming changes are executed by an
\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.executors}{Executor}.
-\section{The Extract and Move Method Refactoring}
+\section{The Extract and Move Method refactoring}
%The Extract and Move Method Refactoring is implemented mainly using these
%classes:
%\begin{itemize}
% \item \type{PrefixSet}
%\end{itemize}
-\subsection{The Building Blocks}
+\subsection{The building blocks}
This is a composite refactoring, and hence is built up using several primitive
refactorings. These basic building blocks are, as its name implies, the
\ExtractMethod refactoring\citing{refactoring} and the \MoveMethod
where the last class is designed to be used together with the processor-based
\typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.core.refactoring.participants}{MoveRefactoring}.
-\subsubsection{The ExtractMethodRefactoring Class}
+\subsubsection{The ExtractMethodRefactoring class}
This class is quite simple in its use. The only parameters it requires for
construction is a compilation
unit\typeref{org.eclipse.jdt.core.ICompilationUnit}, the offset into the source
extracted. Then you have to set the method name for the new method together with
its visibility and some not so interesting parameters.
-\subsubsection{The MoveInstanceMethodProcessor Class}
+\subsubsection{The MoveInstanceMethodProcessor class}
For the \refa{Move Method}, the processor requires a little more advanced input than
the class for the \refa{Extract Method}. For construction it requires a method
-handle\typeref{org.eclipse.jdt.core.IMethod} for the method that is to be moved.
-Then the target for the move have to be supplied as the variable binding from a
-chosen variable declaration. In addition to this, one have to set some
-parameters regarding setters/getters, as well as delegation.
+handle\typeref{org.eclipse.jdt.core.IMethod} for the method that is to be moved.
+Then the target for the move has to be supplied as the variable binding from a
+chosen variable declaration. In addition to this, some parameters have to be set
+regarding setters/getters, as well as delegation.
-To make a working refactoring from the processor, one have to create a
-\type{MoveRefactoring} with it.
+To make the processor a working refactoring, a \type{MoveRefactoring} must be
+created with it as a parameter.
-\subsection{The ExtractAndMoveMethodChanger}
+\subsection{The ExtractAndMoveMethodChanger class}
The \typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.changers}{ExtractAndMoveMethodChanger}
class is a subclass of the class
For finding the best suitable target the analyzer is using a
\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.collectors}{PrefixesCollector} that
collects all the possible candidate targets for the refactoring. All the
-non-candidates is found by an
+non-candidates are found by an
\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.collectors}{UnfixesCollector} that
collects all the targets that will give some kind of error if used. (For
details about the property collectors, see \myref{propertyCollectors}.) All
prefixes (and unfixes) are represented by a
\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.extractors}{Prefix}, and they are collected
-into sets of prefixes. The safe prefixes is found by subtracting from the set of
-candidate prefixes the prefixes that is enclosing any of the unfixes. A prefix
-is enclosing an unfix if the unfix is in the set of its sub-prefixes. As an
-example, \texttt{``a.b''} is enclosing \texttt{``a''}, as is \texttt{``a''}. The
+into sets of prefixes. The safe prefixes are found by subtracting from the set
+of candidate prefixes the prefixes that is enclosing any of the unfixes. A
+prefix is enclosing an unfix if the unfix is in the set of its sub-prefixes. As
+an example, \code{``a.b''} is enclosing \code{``a''}, as is \code{``a''}. The
safe prefixes is unified in a \type{PrefixSet}. If a prefix has only one
occurrence, and is a simple expression, it is considered unsuitable as a move
-target. This occurs in statements such as \texttt{``a.foo()''}. For such
+target. This occurs in statements such as \code{``a.foo()''}. For such
statements it bares no meaning to extract and move them. It only generates an
extra method and the calling of it.
The most suitable target for the refactoring is found by finding the prefix with
the most occurrences. If two prefixes have the same occurrence count, but they
-differ in length, the longest of them is chosen.
-
-\todoin{Clean up sections/subsections.}
+differ in the number of segments, the one with most segments is chosen.
\subsubsection{The
\type{ExtractAndMoveMethodExecutor}}\label{extractAndMoveMethodExecutor}
The \type{ExtractAndMoveMethodExecutor} is responsible for gluing the two
together by feeding the \type{MoveMethod\-RefactoringExecutor} with the
resources needed after executing the extract method refactoring.
-%\see{postExtractExecution}.
\subsubsection{The \type{ExtractMethodRefactoringExecutor}}
This executor is responsible for creating and executing an instance of the
The handle for the method to be moved is found on the basis of the information
gathered after the execution of the \refa{Extract Method} refactoring. The only
information the \type{ExtractMethodRefactoring} is sharing after its execution,
-regarding find the method handle, is the textual representation of the new
+regarding finding the method handle, is the textual representation of the new
method signature. Therefore it must be parsed, the strings for types of the
parameters must be found and translated to a form that can be used to look up
-the method handle from its type handle. They have to be on the unresolved
-form.\todo{Elaborate?} The name for the type is found from the original
-selection, since an extracted method must end up in the same type as the
-originating method.
+the method handle from its type handle. They have to be on the unresolved form.
+The name for the type is found from the original selection, since an extracted
+method must end up in the same type as the originating method.
When analyzing a selection prior to performing the \refa{Extract Method} refactoring, a
target is chosen. It has to be a variable binding, so it is either a field or a
\subsubsection{The SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer}
This analyzer is responsible for analyzing all the possible text selections of a
-method and then choose the best result out of the analysis results that is, by
-the analyzer, considered to be the potential candidates for the Extract and Move
-Method refactoring.
+method and then to choose the best result out of the analysis results that are,
+by the analyzer, considered to be the potential candidates for the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
Before the analyzer is able to work with the text selections of a method, it
needs to generate them. To do this, it parses the method to obtain a
with.
\paragraph{The statement lists creator}
-is responsible for generating lists of statements for all the possible levels of
-statements in the method. The statement lists creator is implemented as an AST
-visitor \see{astVisitor}. It generates lists of statements by visiting all the
-blocks in the method declaration and stores their statements in a collection of
-statement lists. In addition, it visits all of the other statements that can
-have a statement as a child, such as the different control structures and the
-labeled statement.
+is responsible for generating lists of statements for all the possible nesting
+levels of statements in the method. The statement lists creator is implemented
+as an AST visitor \see{astVisitor}. It generates lists of statements by visiting
+all the blocks in the method declaration and stores their statements in a
+collection of statement lists. In addition, it visits all of the other
+statements that can have a statement as a child, such as the different control
+structures and the labeled statement.
The switch statement is the only kind of statement that is not straight forward
to obtain the child statements from. It stores all of its children in a flat
list of statements from a switch statement is therefore traversed, and the
statements between the case statements are grouped as separate lists.
-There is an example of how the statement lists creator would generate lists for
-a simple method in \myref{lst:statementListsExample}.
-
-\begin{listing}[h]
-\def\charwidth{5.7pt}
-\def\indent{4*\charwidth}
-\def\lineheight{\baselineskip}
-\def\mintedtop{\lineheight}
-
-\begin{tikzpicture}[overlay, yscale=-1]
- \tikzstyle{overlaybox}=[fill=lightgray,opacity=0.2]
- \draw[overlaybox] (0,\mintedtop+\lineheight) rectangle
- +(22*\charwidth,10*\lineheight);
- \draw[overlaybox] (\indent,\mintedtop+2*\lineheight) rectangle
- +(13*\charwidth,\lineheight);
- \draw[overlaybox] (2*\indent,\mintedtop+6*\lineheight) rectangle
- +(13*\charwidth,2*\lineheight);
- \draw[overlaybox] (2*\indent,\mintedtop+9*\lineheight) rectangle
- +(13*\charwidth,\lineheight);
-\end{tikzpicture}
-\begin{minted}{java}
-void method() {
- if (bool)
- b.bar();
-
- switch (val) {
- case 1:
- b.foo();
- c.foo();
- default:
- c.foo();
- }
-}
-\end{minted}
-\caption{Example of how the statement lists creator would group a simple method
-into lists of statements. Each highlighted rectangle represents a list.}
-\label{lst:statementListsExample}
-\end{listing}
+The highlighted part of \myref{lst:grandExample} shows an example of how the
+statement lists creator would separate a method body into lists of statements.
\paragraph{The text selections generator} generates text selections for each
-list of statements from the statement lists creator. Conceptually, the generator
-generates a text selection for every possible ordered \todo{make clearer}
-combination of statements in a list. For a list of statements, the boundary
-statements span out a text selection. This means that there are many different
-lists that could span out the same selection.
+list of statements from the statement lists creator. The generator generates a
+text selection for every sub-sequence of statements in a list. For a sequence of
+statements, the first statement and the last statement span out a text
+selection.
In practice, the text selections are calculated by only one traversal of the
statement list. There is a set of generated text selections. For each statement,
generated text selections. The result of adding two text selections is a new
text selection spanned out by the two addends.
+\begin{comment}
\begin{listing}[h]
\def\charwidth{5.7pt}
\def\indent{4*\charwidth}
\end{listing}
\todoin{fix \myref{lst:textSelectionsExample}? Text only? All
sub-sequences\ldots}
+\end{comment}
\paragraph{Finding the candidate} for the refactoring is done by analyzing all
the generated text selection with the \type{ExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer}
\see{extractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer}. If the analyzer generates a useful result,
-an \type{ExtractAndMoveMethodCandidate} is created from it, that is kept in a
+an \type{ExtractAndMoveMethodCandidate} is created from it, which is kept in a
list of potential candidates. If no candidates are found, the
\type{NoTargetFoundException} is thrown.
\todoin{Write about the
ExtractAndMoveMethodCandidateComparator/FavorNoUnfixesCandidateComparator}
-\paragraph{The complexity} of how many text selections that needs to be analyzed
-for a total of $n$ statements is bounded by $O(n^2)$.
-\begin{theorem}
-The number of text selections that need to be analyzed for each list of
-statements of length $n$, is exactly
-
-\begin{equation*}
- \sum_{i=1}^{n} i = \frac{n(n+1)}{2}
- \label{eq:complexityStatementList}
-\end{equation*}
-\label{thm:numberOfTextSelection}
-\end{theorem}
+\subsection{The Prefix class}
+This class exists mainly for holding data about a prefix, such as the expression
+that the prefix represents and the occurrence count of the prefix within a
+selection. In addition to this, it has some functionality such as calculating
+its sub-prefixes and intersecting it with another prefix. The definition of the
+intersection between two prefixes is a prefix representing the longest common
+expression between the two.
-\begin{proof}
- For $n=1$ this is trivial: $\frac{1(1+1)}{2} = \frac{2}{2} = 1$. One statement
- equals one selection.
+\subsection{The PrefixSet class}
+A prefix set holds elements of type \type{Prefix}. It is implemented with the
+help of a \typewithref{java.util}{HashMap} and contains some typical set
+operations, but it does not implement the \typewithref{java.util}{Set}
+interface, since the prefix set does not need all of the functionality a
+\type{Set} requires to be implemented. In addition It needs some other
+functionality not found in the \type{Set} interface. So due to the relatively
+limited use of prefix sets, and that it almost always needs to be referenced as
+such, and not a \type{Set<Prefix>}, it remains as an ad hoc solution to a
+concrete problem.
- For $n=2$, you get one text selection for the first statement, one selection
- for the second statement, and one selection for the two of them combined.
- This equals three selections. $\frac{2(2+1)}{2} = \frac{6}{2} = 3$.
+There are two ways adding prefixes to a \type{PrefixSet}. The first is through
+its \method{add} method. This works like one would expect from a set. It adds
+the prefix to the set if it does not already contain the prefix. The other way
+is to \emph{register} the prefix with the set. When registering a prefix, if the
+set does not contain the prefix, it is just added. If the set contains the
+prefix, its count gets incremented. This is how the occurrence count is handled.
- For $n=3$, you get 3 selections for the two first statements, as in the case
- where $n=2$. In addition you get one selection for the third statement itself,
- and two more statements for the combinations of it with the two previous
- statements. This equals six selections. $\frac{3(3+1)}{2} = \frac{12}{2} = 6$.
+The prefix set also computes the set of prefixes that is not enclosing any
+prefixes of another set. This is kind of a set difference operation only for
+enclosing prefixes.
- Assume that for $n=k$ there exists $\frac{k(k+1)}{2}$ text selections. Then we
- want to add selections for another statement, following the previous $k$
- statements. So, for $n=k+1$, we get one additional selection for the statement
- itself. Then we get one selection for each pair of the new selection and the
- previous $k$ statements. So the total number of selections will be the number
- of already generated selections, plus $k$ for every pair, plus one for the
- statement itself: $\frac{k(k+1)}{2} + k +
- 1 = \frac{k(k+1)+2k+2}{2} = \frac{k(k+1)+2(k+1)}{2} = \frac{(k+1)(k+2)}{2} =
- \frac{(k+1)((k+1)+1)}{2} = \sum_{i=1}^{k+1} i$
-\end{proof}
-
-%\definition{A \emph{body of statements} is a sequence of statements where every
-%statement may have sub-statements.}
-\todoin{Define ``body of statements''?}
-
-\begin{theorem}
- The number of text selections for a body of statements is maximized if all the
- statements are at the same level.
- \label{thm:textSelectionsMaximized}
-\end{theorem}
-
-\begin{proof}
- Assume we have a body of, in total, $k$ statements. Then, the sum of the
- lengths of all the lists of statements in the body, is also $k$. Let
- $\{l,\ldots,m,(k-l-\ldots-m)\}$ be the lengths of the lists of statements in
- the body, with $l+\ldots+m<k \Rightarrow \forall i \in \{l,\ldots,m\} : i < k$.
-
- Then, the number of text selections that are generated for the $k$ statements
- is
-
- {
- \small
- \begin{align*}
- \frac{l(l+1)}{2} + \ldots + \frac{m(m+1)}{2} +
- \frac{(k-l-\ldots-m)((k-l-\ldots-m)+ 1)}{2} = \\
- \frac{l^2+l}{2} + \ldots + \frac{m^2+m}{2} + \frac{k^2 - 2kl - \ldots - 2km +
- l^2 + \ldots + m^2 + k - l - \ldots - m}{2} = \\
- \frac{2l^2 - 2kl + \ldots + 2m^2 - 2km + k^2 + k}{2}
- \end{align*}
- }
-
- \noindent It then remains to show that this inequality holds:
-
- \begin{align*}
- \frac{2l^2 - 2kl + \ldots + 2m^2 - 2km + k^2 + k}{2} < \frac{k(k+1)}{2} =
- \frac{k^2 + k}{2}
- \end{align*}
-
- \noindent By multiplication by $2$ on both sides, and by removing the equal
- parts, we get
-
- \begin{align*}
- 2l^2 - 2kl + \ldots + 2m^2 - 2km < 0
- \end{align*}
-
- Since $\forall i \in \{l,\ldots,m\} : i < k$, we have that $\forall i \in
- \{l,\ldots,m\} : 2ki > 2i^2$, so all the pairs of parts on the form $2i^2-2ki$
- are negative. In sum, the inequality holds.
-
-\end{proof}
-
-Therefore, the complexity for the number of selections that needs to be analyzed
-for a body of $n$ statements is $O\bigl(\frac{n(n+1)}{2}\bigr) = O(n^2)$.
-
-
-\begin{comment}
-\subsection{Finding the IMethod}\label{postExtractExecution}
-\todoin{Rename section. Write??}
-\end{comment}
-
-
-\subsection{The Prefix Class}
-This class exists mainly for holding data about a prefix, such as the expression
-that the prefix represents and the occurrence count of the prefix within a
-selection. In addition to this, it has some functionality such as calculating
-its sub-prefixes and intersecting it with another prefix. The definition of the
-intersection between two prefixes is a prefix representing the longest common
-expression between the two.
-
-\subsection{The PrefixSet Class}
-A prefix set holds elements of type \type{Prefix}. It is implemented with the
-help of a \typewithref{java.util}{HashMap} and contains some typical set
-operations, but it does not implement the \typewithref{java.util}{Set}
-interface, since the prefix set does not need all of the functionality a
-\type{Set} requires to be implemented. In addition It needs some other
-functionality not found in the \type{Set} interface. So due to the relatively
-limited use of prefix sets, and that it almost always needs to be referenced as
-such, and not a \type{Set<Prefix>}, it remains as an ad hoc solution to a
-concrete problem.
-
-There are two ways adding prefixes to a \type{PrefixSet}. The first is through
-its \method{add} method. This works like one would expect from a set. It adds
-the prefix to the set if it does not already contain the prefix. The other way
-is to \emph{register} the prefix with the set. When registering a prefix, if the
-set does not contain the prefix, it is just added. If the set contains the
-prefix, its count gets incremented. This is how the occurrence count is handled.
-
-The prefix set also computes the set of prefixes that is not enclosing any
-prefixes of another set. This is kind of a set difference operation only for
-enclosing prefixes.
-
-\subsection{Hacking the Refactoring Undo
-History}\label{hacking_undo_history}
-\todoin{Where to put this section?}
+\subsection{Hacking the refactoring undo
+history}\label{hacking_undo_history}
+\todoin{Where to put this section?}
As an attempt to make multiple subsequent changes to the workspace appear as a
single action (i.e. make the undo changes appear as such), I tried to alter
There is a technical challenge with this approach, and it relates to the undo
manager, and the concrete implementation
-UndoManager2\typeref{org.eclipse.ltk.internal.core.refactoring.UndoManager2}.
-This implementation is designed in a way that it is not possible to just add an
-undo change, you have to do it in the context of an active
+\typewithref{org.eclipse.ltk.internal.core.refactoring}{UndoManager2}. This
+implementation is designed in a way that it is not possible to just add an undo
+change, you have to do it in the context of an active
operation\typeref{org.eclipse.core.commands.operations.TriggeredOperations}.
One could imagine that it might be possible to trick the undo manager into
believing that you are doing a real change, by executing a refactoring that is
returning a kind of null change that is returning our composite change of undo
-refactorings when it is performed.
+refactorings when it is performed. But this is not the way to go.
Apart from the technical problems with this solution, there is a functional
problem: If it all had worked out as planned, this would leave the undo history
Unfortunately, not everything works as desired with this solution. The grouping
of the undo changes into the composite change does not make the undo operation
appear as an atomic operation. The undo operation is still split up into
-separate undo actions, corresponding to the change done by its originating
-refactoring. And in addition, the undo actions has to be performed separate in
+separate undo actions, corresponding to the changes done by their originating
+refactorings. And in addition, the undo actions have to be performed separate in
all the editors involved. This makes it no solution at all, but a step toward
something worse.
There might be a solution to this problem, but it remains to be found. The
-design of the refactoring undo management is partly to be blamed for this, as it
-it is to complex to be easily manipulated.
-
+design of the refactoring undo management is partly to be blamed for this, as
+it is too complex to be easily manipulated.
-
-\chapter{Analyzing Source Code in Eclipse}
+\chapter{Analyzing source code in Eclipse}
\section{The Java model}\label{javaModel}
The Java model of \name{Eclipse} is its internal representation of a Java project. It
is light-weight, and has only limited possibilities for manipulating source
code. It is typically used as a basis for the Package Explorer in \name{Eclipse}.
-The elements of the Java model is only handles to the underlying elements. This
+The elements of the Java model are only handles to the underlying elements. This
means that the underlying element of a handle does not need to actually exist.
Hence the user of a handle must always check that it exist by calling the
\method{exists} method of the handle.
-The handles with descriptions is listed in \myref{tab:javaModel}.
+The handles with descriptions are listed in \myref{tab:javaModel}, while the
+hierarchy of the Java Model is shown in \myref{fig:javaModel}.
-\begin{table}[h]
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{The elements of the Java Model\citing{vogelEclipseJDT2012}.}
+ \label{tab:javaModel}
\centering
-
- \newcolumntype{L}[1]{>{\hsize=#1\hsize\raggedright\arraybackslash}X}%
% sum must equal number of columns (3)
- \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{| L{0.7} | L{1.1} | L{1.2} |}
- \hline
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{} L{0.7} L{1.1} L{1.2} @{}}
+ \toprule
\textbf{Project Element} & \textbf{Java Model element} &
\textbf{Description} \\
- \hline
+ \midrule
Java project & \type{IJavaProject} & The Java project which contains all other objects. \\
- \hline
+ \midrule
Source folder /\linebreak[2] binary folder /\linebreak[3] external library &
\type{IPackageFragmentRoot} & Hold source or binary files, can be a folder
or a library (zip / jar file). \\
- \hline
+ \midrule
Each package & \type{IPackageFragment} & Each package is below the
\type{IPackageFragmentRoot}, sub-packages are not leaves of the package,
they are listed directed under \type{IPackageFragmentRoot}. \\
- \hline
+ \midrule
Java Source file & \type{ICompilationUnit} & The Source file is always below
the package node. \\
- \hline
- Types /\linebreak[2] Fields /\linebreak[3] Methods & \type{IType} /
- \linebreak[0]
- \type{IField} /\linebreak[3] \type{IMethod} & Types, fields and methods. \\
- \hline
+ \midrule
+ Types / Fields /\linebreak[3] Methods & \type{IType} / \type{IField}
+ /\linebreak[3] \type{IMethod} & Types, fields and methods. \\
+ \bottomrule
\end{tabularx}
- \caption{The elements of the Java Model. {\footnotesize Taken from
- \url{http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/EclipseJDT/article.html}}}
- \label{tab:javaModel}
\end{table}
-The hierarchy of the Java Model is shown in \myref{fig:javaModel}.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
;
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{The Java model of \name{Eclipse}. ``\type{\{ SomeElement \}*}'' means
- \type{SomeElement} zero or more times. For recursive structures,
+ ``\type{SomeElement} zero or more times``. For recursive structures,
``\type{\ldots}'' is used.}
\label{fig:javaModel}
\end{figure}
-\section{The Abstract Syntax Tree}
+\section{The abstract syntax tree}
\name{Eclipse} is following the common paradigm of using an abstract syntax tree for
source code analysis and manipulation.
bracket \var{\{} or a \var{nameToken}. It is recognized by the scanner on the
basis of something equivalent of a regular expression. This part of the process
is often implemented with the use of a finite automata. In fact, it is common to
-specify the tokens in regular expressions, that in turn is translated into a
+specify the tokens in regular expressions, which in turn are translated into a
finite automata lexer. This process can be automated.
The program component used to translate a stream of tokens into something
meaningful, is called a parser. A parser is fed tokens from the scanner and
performs an analysis of the structure of a program. It verifies that the syntax
-is correct according to the grammar rules of a language, that is usually
+is correct according to the grammar rules of a language, that are usually
specified in a context-free grammar, and often in a variant of the
-\name{Backus--Naur
-Form}\footnote{\url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur\_Form}}. The
-result coming from the parser is in the form of an \emph{Abstract Syntax Tree},
-AST for short. It is called \emph{abstract}, because the structure does not
-contain all of the tokens produced by the scanner. It only contain logical
-constructs, and because it forms a tree, all kinds of parentheses and brackets
-are implicit in the structure. It is this AST that is used when performing the
-semantic analysis of the code.
+\name{Backus--Naur Form}. The result coming from the parser is in the form of an
+\emph{Abstract Syntax Tree}, AST for short. It is called \emph{abstract},
+because the structure does not contain all of the tokens produced by the
+scanner. It only contains logical constructs, and because it forms a tree, all
+kinds of parentheses and brackets are implicit in the structure. It is this AST
+that is used when performing the semantic analysis of the code.
As an example we can think of the expression \code{(5 + 7) * 2}. The root of
this tree would in \name{Eclipse} be an \type{InfixExpression} with the operator
-\var{TIMES}, and a left operand that is also an \type{InfixExpression} with the
-operator \var{PLUS}. The left operand \type{InfixExpression}, has in turn a left
-operand of type \type{NumberLiteral} with the value \var{``5''} and a right
+\var{TIMES}, and a left operand, which is also an \type{InfixExpression} with
+the operator \var{PLUS}. The left operand \type{InfixExpression}, has in turn a
+left operand of type \type{NumberLiteral} with the value \var{``5''} and a right
operand \type{NumberLiteral} with the value \var{``7''}. The root will have a
right operand of type \type{NumberLiteral} and value \var{``2''}. The AST for
this expression is illustrated in \myref{fig:astInfixExpression}.
\caption{The format of the abstract syntax tree in \name{Eclipse}.}
\label{fig:astEclipse}
\end{figure}
-\todoin{Add more to the AST format tree? \myref{fig:astEclipse}}
\section{The ASTVisitor}\label{astVisitor}
So far, the only thing that has been addressed is how the data that is going to
be the basis for our analysis is structured. Another aspect of it is how we are
going to traverse the AST to gather the information we need, so we can conclude
-about the properties we are analysing. It is of course possible to start at the
+about the properties we are analyzing. It is of course possible to start at the
top of the tree, and manually search through its nodes for the ones we are
looking for, but that is a bit inconvenient. To be able to efficiently utilize
such an approach, we would need to make our own framework for traversing the
The use of the visitor pattern can be appropriate when the hierarchy of elements
is mostly stable, but the family of operations over its elements is constantly
-growing. This is clearly the case for the \name{Eclipse} AST, since the hierarchy of
-type \type{ASTNode} is very stable, but the functionality of its elements is
-extended every time someone needs to operate on the AST. Another aspect of the
-\name{Eclipse} implementation is that it is a public API, and the visitor pattern is an
-easy way to provide access to the nodes in the tree.
+growing. This is clearly the case for the \name{Eclipse} AST, since the
+hierarchy for the type \type{ASTNode} is very stable, but the functionality of
+its elements is extended every time someone need to operate on the AST. Another
+aspect of the \name{Eclipse} implementation is that it is a public API, and the
+visitor pattern is an easy way to provide access to the nodes in the tree.
The version of the visitor pattern implemented for the AST nodes in \name{Eclipse} also
provides an elegant way to traverse the tree. It does so by following the
before it also makes all its children accept the visitor. The children are only
visited if the visit method of their parent returns \var{true}. This pattern
then makes for a prefix traversal of the AST. If postfix traversal is desired,
-the visitors also has \method{endVisit} methods for each node type, that is
+the visitors also have \method{endVisit} methods for each node type, which is
called after the \method{visit} method for a node. In addition to these visit
methods, there are also the methods \method{preVisit(ASTNode)},
\method{postVisit(ASTNode)} and \method{preVisit2(ASTNode)}. The
\refa{Extract and Move Method} refactoring. It visits expression
statements\typeref{org.eclipse.jdt.core.dom.ExpressionStatement} and creates
prefixes from its expressions in the case of method invocations. The prefixes
-found is registered with a prefix set, together with all its sub-prefixes.
+found are registered with a prefix set, together with all its sub-prefixes.
\subsection{The UnfixesCollector}\label{unfixes}
The \typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.extractors.collectors}{UnfixesCollector}
finds unfixes within a selection.
-
-
-
-\subsection{The ContainsReturnStatementCollector}
-The
-\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.collectors}{ContainsReturnStatementCollector}
-is a very simple property collector. It only visits the return statements within
-a selection, and can report whether it encountered a return statement or not.
-
-\subsection{The LastStatementCollector}
-The \typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.collectors}{LastStatementCollector}
-collects the last statement of a selection. It does so by only visiting the top
-level statements of the selection, and compares the textual end offset of each
-encountered statement with the end offset of the previous statement found.
+\todoin{Give more technical detail?}
\section{Checkers}\label{checkers}
-\todoin{Check out ExtractMethodAnalyzer from ExtractMethodRefactoring}
-The checkers are a range of classes that checks that text selections complies
+The checkers are a range of classes that checks that text selections comply
with certain criteria. All checkers operates under the assumption that the code
they check is free from compilation errors. If a
\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.analyzers}{Checker} fails, it throws a
are described next. They are run in the order presented below.
\subsection{The CallToProtectedOrPackagePrivateMethodChecker}
-This checker is designed to prevent an error that can occur in situations where
-a method is declared in one class, but overridden in another. If a text
-selection contains a call to a method like this, and the seletion is extracted
-to a new method, the subsequent movement of this method could cause the code to
-break.
-
-The code breaks in situations where the method call in the selection is to a
-method that has the \code{protected} modifier, or it does not have any access
-modifiers, i.e. it is package-private.
-
-The workings of the \type{CallToProtectedOrPackagePrivateMethod\-Checker} is
-therefore very simple. It looks for calls to methods that are either protected
-or package-private within the selection, and throws an
+This checker is used to check that at selection does not contain a call to a
+method that is protected or package-private. Such a method either has the access
+modifier \code{protected} or it has no access modifier.
+
+The workings of the \type{CallToProtectedOrPackagePrivateMethod\-Checker} is
+very simple. It looks for calls to methods that are either protected or
+package-private within the selection, and throws an
\type{IllegalExpressionFoundException} if one is found.
-The problem this checker helps to avoid, is a little subtle. The problem does
-not arise in the class where the change is done, but in a class derived from it.
-This shows that classes acting as superclasses are especially fragile to
-introducing errors in the context of automated refactoring. This is also shown
-in bug\ldots \todoin{File Eclipse bug report}
+\subsection{The DoubleClassInstanceCreationChecker}
+The \type{DoubleClassInstanceCreationChecker} checks that there are no double
+class instance creations where the inner constructor call takes an argument that
+is built up using field references.
+
+The checker visits all nodes of type \type{ClassInstanceCreation} within a
+selection. For all of these nodes, if its parent also is a class instance
+creation, it accepts a visitor that throws a
+\type{IllegalExpressionFoundException} if it encounters a name that is a field
+reference.
\subsection{The InstantiationOfNonStaticInnerClassChecker}
-\todoin{Contains duplicate text from semantic section}
-When a non-static inner class is instatiated, this must happen in the scope of
-its declaring class. This is because it must have access to the members of the
-declaring class. If the inner class is public, it is possible to instantiate it
-through an instance of its declaring class, but this is not handled by the
-\type{MoveInstanceMethodProcessor} in Eclipse when moving a method. Therefore,
-performing a move on a method that instantiates a non-static inner class, will
-break the code if the instantiation is not handled properly. For this reason,
-the \type{InstantiationOfNonStaticInnerClassChecker} does not validate
-selections that contains instantiations of non-static inner classes. This
-problem is also related to bug\ldots \todoin{File Eclipse bug report}
+The \type{InstantiationOfNonStaticInnerClassChecker} checks that selections
+do not contain instantiations of non-static inner classes. The
+\type{MoveInstanceMethodProcessor} in \name{Eclipse} does not handle such
+instantiations gracefully when moving a method. This problem is also related to
+bug\ldots \todoin{File Eclipse bug report}
\subsection{The EnclosingInstanceReferenceChecker}
-\todoin{Contains duplicate text from semantic section}
-The purpose of this checker is to verify that the names in a selection are not
-referencing any enclosing instances. This is for making sure that all references
-is legal in a method that is to be moved. Theoretically, some situations could
-be easily solved my passing a reference to the referenced class with the moved
-method (e.g. when calling public methods), but the dependency on the
+The purpose of this checker is to verify that the names in a text selection are
+not referencing any enclosing instances. In theory, the underlying problem could
+be solved in some situations, but our dependency on the
\type{MoveInstanceMethodProcessor} prevents this.
The
is a modified version of the
\typewithref{org.eclipse.jdt.internal.corext.refactoring.structure.MoveInstanceMethod\-Processor}{EnclosingInstanceReferenceFinder}
from the \type{MoveInstanceMethodProcessor}. Wherever the
-\type{EnclosingInstanceReferenceFinder} would create a fatal error status, the
-checker throws a \type{CheckerException}.
+\type{EnclosingInstanceReferenceFinder} would create a fatal error status, the
+checker will throw a \type{CheckerException}.
-It works by first finding all of the enclosing types of a selection. Thereafter
-it visits all its simple names to check that they are not references to
-variables or methods declared in any of the enclosing types. In addition the
-checker visits \var{this}-expressions to verify that no such expressions are
-qualified with any name.
+The checker works by first finding all of the enclosing types of a selection.
+Thereafter, it visits all the simple names of the selection to check that they
+are not references to variables or methods declared in any of the enclosing
+types. In addition, the checker visits \var{this}-expressions to verify that no
+such expressions are qualified with any name.
\subsection{The ReturnStatementsChecker}\label{returnStatementsChecker}
-\todoin{Contains duplicate text from semantic section}
-The checker for return statements is meant to verify that if a text selection
-contains a return statement, then every possible execution path within the
-selection ends in a return statement. This property is important regarding the
-\ExtractMethod refactoring. If it holds, it means that a method could be
-extracted from the selection, and a call to it could be substituted for the
-selection. If the method has a non-void return type, then a call to it would
-also be a valid return point for the calling method. If its return value is of
-the void type, then the \type{ExtractMethodRefactoring} of \name{Eclipse}
-appends an empty return statement to the back of the method call. Therefore, the
-analysis does not discriminate on either kinds of return statements, with or
-without a return value.
-
-The property description implies that if the selection is free from return
-statements, then the checker validates. So this is the first thing the checker
-investigates.
-
-If the checker proceedes any further, it is because the selection contains one
+The checker for return statements is meant to verify that a text selection is
+consistent regarding return statements.
+
+If the selection is free from return statements, then the checker validates. So
+this is the first thing the checker investigates.
+
+If the checker proceeds any further, it is because the selection contains one
or more return statements. The next test is therefore to check if the last
-statement of the selection ends in either a return or a throw statement. If the
-last statement of the selection ends in a return statement, then all execution
-paths within the selection should end in either this, or another, return
-statement. This is also true for a throw statement, since it causes an immediate
-exit from the current block, together with all outer blocks in its control flow
-that does not catch the thrown exception.
-
-Return statements can be either explicit or implicit. An \emph{explicit} return
-statement is formed by using the \code{return} keyword, while an \emph{implicit}
-return statement is a statement that is not formed by the \code{return} keyword,
-but must be the last statement of a method that can have any side effects. This
-can happen in methods with a void return type. An example is a statement that is
-inside one or more blocks. The last statement of a method could for instance be
-an if-statement, but the last statement that is executed in the method, and that
-can have any side effects, may be located inside the block of the else part of
-the if-statement.
-
-The responsibility for checking that the last statement of the selection
-eventually ends in a return or throw statement, is put on the
+statement of the selection ends in either a return or a throw statement. The
+responsibility for checking that the last statement of the selection eventually
+ends in a return or throw statement, is put on the
\type{LastStatementOfSelectionEndsInReturnOrThrowChecker}. For every node
-visited, if it is a statement, it does a test to see if the statement is a
+visited, if the node is a statement, it does a test to see if the statement is a
return, a throw or if it is an implicit return statement. If this is the case,
no further checking is done. This checking is done in the \code{preVisit2}
method \see{astVisitor}. If the node is not of a type that is being handled by
-its type specific visit method, the checker performs a simple test. If the node
+its type-specific visit method, the checker performs a simple test. If the node
being visited is not the last statement of its parent that is also enclosed by
the selection, an \type{IllegalStatementFoundException} is thrown. This ensures
that all statements are taken care of, one way or the other. It also ensures
finds the last statement declared in its enclosing method. If this statement is
the same as the one under investigation, it is considered an implicit return
statement. If the statements are not the same, the checker does a search to see
-if statement examined is also the last statement of the method that can be
+if the statement examined is also the last statement of the method that can be
reached. This includes the last statement of a block statement, a labeled
statement, a synchronized statement or a try statement, that in turn is the last
-statement enclosed by the statement types listed. This search goes through all
-the parents of a statement until a statement is found that is not one of the
-mentioned acceptable parent statements. If the search ends in a method
-declaration, then the statement is considered to be the last reachable statement
-of the method, and thus also an implicit return statement.
-
-There are two kinds of statements that are handled explicitly. It is
-if-statements and try-statements. Block, labeled and do-statements are handled
-by fall-through to the other two. Do-statements are considered equal to blocks
-in this context, since their bodies are always evaluated at least one time. If-
-and try-statements are visited only if they are the last node of their parent
-within the selection.
-
-For if-statements, the rule is that if the then-part does not contain any return
-or throw statements, it is considered illegal. If it does contain a return or
+statement enclosed by one of the statement types listed. This search goes
+through all the parents of a statement until a statement is found that is not
+one of the mentioned acceptable parent statements. If the search ends in a
+method declaration, then the statement is considered to be the last reachable
+statement of the method, and thus it is an implicit return statement.
+
+There are two kinds of statements that are handled explicitly: If-statements and
+try-statements. Block, labeled and do-statements are handled by fall-through to
+the other two.
+
+If-statements are handled explicitly by overriding their type-specific visit
+method. If the then-part does not contain any return or throw statements an
+\type{IllegalStatementFoundException} is thrown. If it does contain a return or
throw, its else-part is checked. If the else-part is non-existent, or it does
-not contain any return or throw statements, it is considered illegal. If the
-statement is not regarded illegal, its children are visited.
+not contain any return or throw statements an exception is thrown. If no
+exception is thrown while visiting the if-statement, its children are visited.
-Try-statements are handled much the same way as if-statements. Its body must
+A try-statement is checked very similar to an if-statement. Its body must
contain a return or throw. The same applies to its catch clauses and finally
-body.
+body. Failure to validate produces an \type{IllegalStatementFoundException}.
If the checker does not complain at any point, the selection is considered valid
with respect to return statements.
\subsection{The AmbiguousReturnValueChecker}
-\todoin{revisit}
-This checker verifies that there are no \emph{ambiguous return values} in a
-selection.
+This checker verifies that there are no ambiguous return values in a selection.
-First the checker needs to collect some data. Those data are the binding keys
+First, the checker needs to collect some data. Those data are the binding keys
for all simple names that are assigned to within the selection, including
-variable declarations, but excluding fields. The checker also collects whether
-there exists a return statement in the selection or not. No further checks of
-return statements are needed, since, at this point, the selection is already
-checked for illegal return statements \see{returnStatementsChecker}.
+variable declarations, but excluding fields. The checker also finds out whether
+a return statement is found in the selection or not. No further checks of return
+statements are needed, since, at this point, the selection is already checked
+for illegal return statements \see{returnStatementsChecker}.
After the binding keys of the assignees are collected, the checker searches the
part of the enclosing method that is after the selection for references whose
%on\ldots)}
\subsection{The IllegalStatementsChecker}
-\todoin{Contains duplicate text from semantic section}
This checker is designed to check for illegal statements.
-Any use of the \var{super} keyword is prohibited, since its meaning is altered
-when moving a method to another class.
+Notice that labels in break and continue statements need some special treatment.
+Since a label does not have any binding information, we have to search upwards
+in the AST to find the \type{LabeledStatement} that corresponds to the label
+from the break or continue statement, and check that it is contained in the
+selection. If the break or continue statement does not have a label attached to
+it, it is checked that its innermost enclosing loop or switch statement (break
+statements only) also is contained in the selection.
-For a \emph{break} statement, there is two situations to consider: A break
-statement with or without a label. If the break statement has a label, it is
-checked that whole of the labeled statement is inside the selection. Since a
-label does not have any binding information, we have to search upwards in the
-AST to find the \type{LabeledStatement} that corresponds to the label from the
-break statement, and check that it is contained in the selection. If the break
-statement does not have a label attached to it, it is checked that its innermost
-enclosing loop or switch statement also is inside the selection.
+\chapter{Technicalities}
-The situation for a \emph{continue} statement is the same as for a break
-statement, except that it is not allowed inside switch statements.
+\section{Source code organization}
+All the parts of this master's project are under version control with
+\name{Git}\footnote{\url{http://git-scm.com/}}.
-Regarding \emph{assignments}, two types of assignments is allowed: Assignment to
-a non-final variable and assignment to an array access. All other assignments is
-regarded illegal.
+The software written is organized as some \name{Eclipse} plugins. Writing a plugin is
+the natural way to utilize the API of \name{Eclipse}. This also makes it possible to
+provide a user interface to manually run operations on selections in program
+source code or whole projects/packages.
-\todoin{Finish\ldots}
+When writing a plugin in \name{Eclipse}, one has access to resources such as the
+current workspace, the open editor and the current selection.
+The thesis work is contained in the following Eclipse projects:
-\chapter{Benchmarking}
-\todoin{Better name than ``benchmarking''?}
-This part of the master's project is located in the \name{Eclipse} project
-\code{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark}. The purpose of it is to run the equivalent
-of the \type{SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodChanger}
-\see{searchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodChanger} over a larger software project,
-both to test its robustness but also its effect on different software metrics.
+\begin{description}
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor] \hfill \\ This is the main Eclipse plugin
+ project, and contains all of the business logic for the plugin.
-\section{The benchmark setup}
-The benchmark itself is set up as a \name{JUnit} test case. This is a convenient
-setup, and utilizes the \name{JUnit Plugin Test Launcher}. This provides us a
-with a fully functional \name{Eclipse} workbench. Most importantly, this gives
-us access to the Java Model of \name{Eclipse} \see{javaModel}.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.tests] \hfill \\
+ This project contains the tests for the main plugin.
-\subsection{The ProjectImporter}
-The Java project that is going to be used as the data for the benchmark, must be
-imported into the JUnit workspace. This is done by the
-\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark}{ProjectImporter}. The importer
-require the absolute path to the project description file. It is named
-\code{.project} and is located at the root of the project directory.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.examples] \hfill \\
+ Contains example code used in testing. It also contains code for managing
+ this example code, such as creating an Eclipse project from it before a test
+ run.
-The project description is loaded to find the name of the project to be
-imported. The project that shall be the destination for the import is created in
-the workspace, on the base of the name from the description. Then an import
-operation is created, based on both the source and destination information. The
-import operation is run to perform the import.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark] \hfill \\
+ This project contains code for running search based versions of the
+ composite refactoring over selected Eclipse projects.
-I have found no simple API call to accomplish what the importer does, which
-tells me that it may not be too many people performing this particular action.
-The solution to the problem was found on \name{Stack
-Overflow}\footnote{\url{https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12401297}}. It
-contains enough dirty details to be considered inconvenient to use, if not
-wrapping it in a class like my \type{ProjectImporter}. One would probably have
-to delve into the source code for the import wizard to find out how the import
-operation works, if no one had already done it.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.releng] \hfill \\
+ Contains the rmap, queries and target definitions needed by Buckminster on
+ the Jenkins continuous integration server.
-\section{Statistics}
-Statistics for the analysis and changes is captured by the
-\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.aspects}{StatisticsAspect}. This an
-\emph{aspect} written in \name{AspectJ}.
+\end{description}
-\subsection{AspectJ}
-\name{AspectJ}\footnote{\url{http://eclipse.org/aspectj/}} is an extension to
-the Java language, and facilitates combining aspect-oriented programming with
-the object-oriented programming in Java.
+\subsection{The no.uio.ifi.refaktor project}
-Aspect-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that is meant to isolate
-so-called \emph{cross-cutting concerns} into their own modules. These
-cross-cutting concerns are functionalities that spans over multiple classes, but
-may not belong naturally in any of them. It can be functionality that does not
-concern the business logic of an application, and thus may be a burden when
-entangled with parts of the source code it does not really belong. Examples
-include logging, debugging, optimization and security.
+\subsubsection{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze}
+This package, and its sub-packages, contains code that is used for analyzing
+Java source code. The most important sub-packages are presented below.
-Aspects are interacting with other modules by defining advices. The concept of
-an \emph{advice} is known from both aspect-oriented and functional
-programming\citing{wikiAdvice2014}. It is a function that modifies another
-function when the latter is run. An advice in AspectJ is somewhat similar to a
-method in Java. It is meant to alter the behavior of other methods, and contains
-a body that is executed when it is applied.
+\begin{description}
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.analyzers] \hfill \\
+ This package contains source code analyzers. These are usually responsible
+ for analyzing text selections or running specialized analyzers for different
+ kinds of entities. Their structures are often hierarchical. This means that
+ you have an analyzer for text selections, that in turn is utilized by an
+ analyzer that analyzes all the selections of a method. Then there are
+ analyzers for analyzing all the methods of a type, all the types of a
+ compilation unit, all the compilation units of a package, and, at last, all
+ of the packages in a project.
-An advice can be applied at a defined \emph{pointcut}. A pointcut picks out one
-or more \emph{join points}. A join point is a well-defined point in the
-execution of a program. It can occur when calling a method defined for a
-particular class, when calling all methods with the same name,
-accessing/assigning to a particular field of a given class and so on. An advice
-can be declared to run both before, after returning from a pointcut, when there
-is thrown an exception in the pointcut or after the pointcut either returns or
-throws an exception. In addition to picking out join points, a pointcut can
-also bind variables from its context, so they can be accessed in the body of an
-advice. An example of a pointcut and an advice is found in
-\myref{lst:aspectjExample}.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.checkers] \hfill \\
+ A package containing checkers. The checkers are classes used to validate
+ that a selection can be further analyzed and chosen as a candidate for a
+ refactoring. Invalidating properties can be such as usage of inner classes
+ or the need for multiple return values.
-\begin{listing}[h]
-\begin{minted}{aspectj}
-pointcut methodAnalyze(
- SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer analyzer) :
- call(* SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer.analyze())
- && target(analyzer);
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.collectors] \hfill \\
+ This package contains the property collectors. Collectors are used to gather
+ properties from a text selection. This is mostly properties regarding
+ referenced names and their occurrences. It is these properties that make up
+ the basis for finding the best candidates for a refactoring.
+\end{description}
-after(SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer analyzer) :
- methodAnalyze(analyzer) {
- statistics.methodCount++;
- debugPrintMethodAnalysisProgress(analyzer.method);
-}
-\end{minted}
-\caption{An example of a pointcut named \method{methodAnalyze},
-and an advice defined to be applied after it has occurred.}
-\label{lst:aspectjExample}
-\end{listing}
+\subsubsection{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change}
+This package, and its sub-packages, contains functionality for manipulate source
+code.
-\subsection{The Statistics class}
-The statistics aspect stores statistical information in an object of type
-\type{Statistics}. As of now, the aspect needs to be initialized at the point in
-time where it is desired that it starts its data gathering. At any point in time
-the statistics aspect can be queried for a snapshot of the current statistics.
+\begin{description}
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.changers] \hfill \\
+ This package contains source code changers. They are used to glue together
+ the analysis of source code and the actual execution of the changes.
-The \type{Statistics} class also include functionality for generating a report
-of its gathered statistics. The report can be given either as a string or it can
-be written to a file.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.executors] \hfill \\
+ The executors that are responsible for making concrete changes are found in
+ this package. They are mostly used to create and execute one or more Eclipse
+ refactorings.
-\subsection{Advices}
-The statistics aspect contains advices for gathering statistical data from
-different parts of the benchmarking process. It captures statistics from both
-the analysis part and the execution part of the composite \ExtractAndMoveMethod
-refactoring.
-
-For the analysis part, there are advices to count the number of text selections
-analyzed and the number of methods, types, compilation units and packages
-analyzed. There are also advices that counts for how many of the methods there
-is found a selection that is a candidate for the refactoring, and for how many
-methods there is not.
-
-There exists advices for counting both the successful and unsuccessful
-executions of all the refactorings. Both for the \ExtractMethod and \MoveMethod
-refactorings in isolation, as well as for the combination of them.
-
-\section{Optimizations}
-When looking for optimizations to make for the benchmarking process, I used the
-\name{VisualVM}\footnote{\url{http://visualvm.java.net/}} \gloss{profiler} for
-the Java Virtual Machine to both profile the application and also to make memory
-dumps of its heap.
-
-\subsection{Caching}
-When \gloss{profiling} the benchmark process before making any optimizations, it
-early became apparent that the parsing of source code was a place to direct
-attention towards. This discovery was done when only \emph{analyzing} source
-code, before trying to do any \emph{manipulation} of it. Caching of the parsed
-ASTs seemed like the best way to save some time, as expected. With only a simple
-cache of the most recently used AST, the analysis time was speeded up by a
-factor of around 20. This number depends a little upon which type of system the
-analysis is run.
-
-The caching is managed by a cache manager, that now, by default, utilizes the
-not so well known feature of Java called a \emph{soft reference}. Soft
-references are best explained in the context of weak references. A \emph{weak
-reference} is a reference to an object instance that is only guaranteed to
-persist as long as there is a \emph{strong reference} or a soft reference
-referring the same object. If no such reference is found, its referred object is
-garbage collected. A strong reference is basically the same as a regular Java
-reference. A soft reference has the same guarantees as a week reference when it
-comes to its relation to strong references, but it is not necessarily garbage
-collected whenever there exists no strong references to it. A soft reference
-\emph{may} reside in memory as long as the JVM has enough free memory in the
-heap. A soft reference will therefore usually perform better than a weak
-reference when used for simple caching and similar tasks. The way to use a
-soft/weak reference is to as it for its referent. The return value then has to
-be tested to check that it is not \var{null}. For the basic usage of soft
-references, see \myref{lst:softReferenceExample}. For a more thorough
-explanation of weak references in general, see\citing{weakRef2006}.
-
-\begin{listing}[h]
-\begin{minted}{java}
-// Strong reference
-Object strongRef = new Object();
-
-// Soft reference
-SoftReference<Object> softRef =
- new SoftReference<Object>(new Object());
-
-// Using the soft reference
-Object obj = softRef.get();
-if (obj != null) {
- // Use object here
-}
-\end{minted}
-\caption{Showing the basic usage of soft references. Weak references is used the
- same way. {\footnotesize (The references are part of the \code{java.lang.ref}
-package.)}}
-\label{lst:softReferenceExample}
-\end{listing}
-
-The cache based on soft references has no limit for how many ASTs it caches. It
-is generally not advisable to keep references to ASTs for prolonged periods of
-time, since they are expensive structures to hold on to. For regular plugin
-development, \name{Eclipse} recommends not creating more than one AST at a time to
-limit memory consumption. Since the benchmarking has nothing to do with user
-experience, and throughput is everything, these advices are intentionally
-ignored. This means that during the benchmarking process, the target \name{Eclipse}
-application may very well work close to its memory limit for the heap space for
-long periods during the benchmark.
-
-\subsection{Memento}
-\todoin{Write}
-
-
-\chapter{Technicalities}
-
-\section{Source code organization}
-All the parts of this master's project is under version control with
-\name{Git}\footnote{\url{http://git-scm.com/}}.
-
-The software written is organized as some \name{Eclipse} plugins. Writing a plugin is
-the natural way to utilize the API of \name{Eclipse}. This also makes it possible to
-provide a user interface to manually run operations on selections in program
-source code or whole projects/packages.
-
-When writing a plugin in \name{Eclipse}, one has access to resources such as the
-current workspace, the open editor and the current selection.
-
-The thesis work is contained in the following Eclipse projects:
-
-\begin{description}
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor] \hfill \\ This is the main Eclipse plugin
- project, and contains all of the business logic for the plugin.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.tests] \hfill \\
- This project contains the tests for the main plugin.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.examples] \hfill \\
- Contains example code used in testing. It also contains code for managing
- this example code, such as creating an Eclipse project from it before a test
- run.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark] \hfill \\
- This project contains code for running search based versions of the
- composite refactoring over selected Eclipse projects.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.releng] \hfill \\
- Contains the rmap, queries and target definitions needed by by Buckminster
- on the Jenkins continuous integration server.
-
-\end{description}
-
-\subsection{The no.uio.ifi.refaktor project}
-
-\subsubsection{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze}
-This package, and its subpackages, contains code that is used for analyzing Java
-source code. The most important subpackages are presented below.
-
-\begin{description}
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.analyzers] \hfill \\
- This package contains source code analyzers. These are usually responsible
- for analyzing text selections or running specialized analyzers for different
- kinds of entities. Their structure are often hierarchical. This means that
- you have an analyzer for text selections, that in turn is utilized by an
- analyzer that analyzes all the selections of a method. Then there are
- analyzers for analyzing all the methods of a type, all the types of a
- compilation unit, all the compilation units of a package, and, at last, all
- of the packages in a project.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.checkers] \hfill \\
- A package containing checkers. The checkers are classes used to validate
- that a selection can be further analyzed and chosen as a candidate for a
- refactoring. Invalidating properties can be such as usage of inner classes
- or the need for multiple return values.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.analyze.collectors] \hfill \\
- This package contains the property collectors. Collectors are used to gather
- properties from a text selection. This is mostly properties regarding
- referenced names and their occurrences. It is these properties that makes up
- the basis for finding the best candidates for a refactoring.
-\end{description}
-
-\subsubsection{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change}
-This package, and its subpackages, contains functionality for manipulate source
-code.
-
-\begin{description}
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.changers] \hfill \\
- This package contains source code changers. They are used to glue together
- the analysis of source code and the actual execution of the changes.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.executors] \hfill \\
- The executors that are responsible for making concrete changes are found in
- this package. They are mostly used to create and execute one or more Eclipse
- refactorings.
-
- \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.processors] \hfill \\
- Contains a refactoring processor for the \MoveMethod refactoring. The code
- is stolen and modified to fix a bug. The related bug is described in
- \myref{eclipse_bug_429416}.
+ \item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.processors] \hfill \\
+ Contains a refactoring processor for the \MoveMethod refactoring. The code
+ is stolen and modified to fix a bug. The related bug is described in
+ \myref{eclipse_bug_429416}.
\end{description}
classes for different caching strategies.
\item[no.uio.ifi.refaktor.utils.nullobjects] \hfill \\
- Contains classes for creating different null objects. Most of the classes is
- used to represent null objects of different handle types. These null objects
- are returned from various utility classes instead of returning a \var{null}
- value when other values are not available.
+ Contains classes for creating different null objects. Most of the classes
+ are used to represent null objects of different handle types. These null
+ objects are returned from various utility classes instead of returning a
+ \var{null} value when other values are not available.
\end{description}
\subsection{Problems with AspectJ}
The Buckminster build worked fine until introducing AspectJ into the project.
-When building projects using AspectJ, there are some additional steps that needs
+When building projects using AspectJ, there are some additional steps that need
to be performed. First of all, the aspects themselves must be compiled. Then the
-aspects needs to be woven with the classes they affect. This demands a process
+aspects need to be woven with the classes they affect. This demands a process
that does multiple passes over the source code.
When using AspectJ with \name{Eclipse}, the specialized compilation and the
with files that has the extensions \code{*.java} and \code{*.aj}. I tried to
setup this in the build properties file for the project containing the aspects,
but to no avail. The project containing the aspects does not seem to be built at
-all, and the projects that depends on it complains that they cannot find certain
+all, and the projects that depend on it complain that they cannot find certain
classes.
I then managed to write an \name{Ant}\footnote{\url{https://ant.apache.org/}}
provided by the \name{Eclipse} installation when building the project. This
obviously creates some problems with maintaining the list of dependencies in the
Ant file, as well as remembering to copy the plugins every time the list of
-dependencies change.
+dependencies changes.
The Ant script described above is run by Jenkins before the Buckminster setup
and build. When setup like this, the Buckminster build succeeds for the projects
while, before they were solved. This is reflected in the ``Test Result Trend''
and ``Code Coverage Trend'' reported by Jenkins.
+\chapter{Benchmarking}\label{sec:benchmarking}
+This part of the master's project is located in the \name{Eclipse} project
+\code{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark}. The purpose of it is to run the equivalent
+of the \type{SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodChanger}
+\see{searchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodChanger} over a larger software project,
+both to test its robustness but also its effect on different software metrics.
-\chapter{Methodology}
+\section{The benchmark setup}
+The benchmark itself is set up as a \name{JUnit} test case. This is a convenient
+setup, and utilizes the \name{JUnit Plugin Test Launcher}. This provides us with
+a fully functional \name{Eclipse} workbench. Most importantly, this gives us
+access to the Java Model of \name{Eclipse} \see{javaModel}.
-\section{Evolutionary design}
-In the programming work for this project, it have tried to use a design strategy
-called evolutionary design, also known as continuous or incremental
-design\citing{wiki_continuous_2014}. It is a software design strategy
-advocated by the Extreme Programming community. The essence of the strategy is
-that you should let the design of your program evolve naturally as your
-requirements change. This is seen in contrast with up-front design, where
-design decisions are made early in the process.
+\subsection{The ProjectImporter}
+The Java project that is going to be used as the data for the benchmark, must be
+imported into the JUnit workspace. This is done by the
+\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark}{ProjectImporter}. The importer
+requires the absolute path to the project description file. This file is named
+\code{.project} and is located at the root of the project directory.
-The motivation behind evolutionary design is to keep the design of software as
-simple as possible. This means not introducing unneeded functionality into a
-program. You should defer introducing flexibility into your software, until it
-is needed to be able to add functionality in a clean way.
+The project description is loaded to find the name of the project to be
+imported. The project that shall be the destination for the import is created in
+the workspace, on the base of the name from the description. Then an import
+operation is created, based on both the source and destination information. The
+import operation is run to perform the import.
-Holding up design decisions, implies that the time will eventually come when
-decisions have to be made. The flexibility of the design then relies on the
-programmer's abilities to perform the necessary refactoring, and \his confidence
-in those abilities. From my experience working on this project, I can say that
-this confidence is greatly enhanced by having automated tests to rely on
-\see{tdd}.
+I have found no simple API call to accomplish what the importer does, which
+tells me that it may not be too many people performing this particular action.
+The solution to the problem was found on \name{Stack
+Overflow}\footnote{\url{https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12401297}}. It
+contains enough dirty details to be considered inconvenient to use, if not
+wrapping it in a class like my \type{ProjectImporter}. One would probably have
+to delve into the source code for the import wizard to find out how the import
+operation works, if no one had already done it.
-The choice of going for evolutionary design developed naturally. As Fowler
-points out in his article \tit{Is Design Dead?}, evolutionary design much
-resembles the ``code and fix'' development strategy\citing{fowler_design_2004}.
-A strategy that most of us have practiced in school. This was also the case when
-I first started this work. I had to learn the inner workings of Eclipse and its
-refactoring-related plugins. That meant a lot of fumbling around with code I did
-not know, in a trial and error fashion. Eventually I started writing tests for
-my code, and my design began to evolve.
+\section{Statistics}
+Statistics for the analysis and changes is captured by the
+\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.aspects}{StatisticsAspect}. This an
+\emph{aspect} written in \name{AspectJ}.
-\section{Test-driven development}\label{tdd}
-As mentioned before, the project started out as a classic code and fix
-developmen process. My focus was aimed at getting something to work, rather than
-doing so according to best practice. This resulted in a project that got out of
-its starting blocks, but it was not accompanied by any tests. Hence it was soon
-difficult to make any code changes with the confidence that the program was
-still correct afterwards (assuming it was so before changing it). I always knew
-that I had to introduce some tests at one point, but this experience accelerated
-the process of leading me onto the path of testing.
+\subsection{AspectJ}
+\name{AspectJ}\footnote{\url{http://eclipse.org/aspectj/}} is an extension to
+the Java language, and facilitates combining aspect-oriented programming with
+the object-oriented programming in Java.
-I then wrote tests for the core functionality of the plugin, and thus gained
-more confidence in the correctness of my code. I could now perform quite drastic
-changes without ``wetting my pants``. After this, nearly all of the semantic
-changes done to the business logic of the project, or the addition of new
-functionality, was made in a test-driven manner. This means that before
-performing any changes, I would define the desired functionality through a set
-of tests. I would then run the tests to check that they were run and that they
-did not pass. Then I would do any code changes necessary to make the tests
-pass. The definition of how the program is supposed to operate is then captured
-by the tests. However, this does not prove the correctness of the analysis
-leading to the test definitions.
+Aspect-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that is meant to isolate
+so-called \emph{cross-cutting concerns} into their own modules. These
+cross-cutting concerns are functionalities that span over multiple classes, but
+may not belong naturally in any of them. It can be functionality that does not
+concern the business logic of an application, and thus may be a burden when
+entangled with parts of the source code it does not really belong. Examples
+include logging, debugging, optimization and security.
-\section{Continuous integration}
-\todoin{???}
+Aspects are interacting with other modules by defining advices. The concept of
+an \emph{advice} is known from both aspect-oriented and functional
+programming\citing{wikiAdvice2014}. It is a function that modifies another
+function when the latter is run. An advice in AspectJ is somewhat similar to a
+method in Java. It is meant to alter the behavior of other methods, and contains
+a body that is executed when it is applied.
+An advice can be applied at a defined \emph{pointcut}. A pointcut picks out one
+or more \emph{join points}. A join point is a well-defined point in the
+execution of a program. It can occur when calling a method defined for a
+particular class, when calling all methods with the same name,
+accessing/assigning to a particular field of a given class and so on. An advice
+can be declared to run both before, after returning from a pointcut, when there
+is thrown an exception in the pointcut or after the pointcut either returns or
+throws an exception. In addition to picking out join points, a pointcut can
+also bind variables from its context, so they can be accessed in the body of an
+advice. An example of a pointcut and an advice is found in
+\myref{lst:aspectjExample}.
+
+\begin{listing}[h]
+\begin{minted}{aspectj}
+pointcut methodAnalyze(
+ SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer analyzer) :
+ call(* SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer.analyze())
+ && target(analyzer);
+
+after(SearchBasedExtractAndMoveMethodAnalyzer analyzer) :
+ methodAnalyze(analyzer) {
+ statistics.methodCount++;
+ debugPrintMethodAnalysisProgress(analyzer.method);
+}
+\end{minted}
+\caption{An example of a pointcut named \method{methodAnalyze},
+and an advice defined to be applied after it has occurred.}
+\label{lst:aspectjExample}
+\end{listing}
+
+\subsection{The Statistics class}
+The statistics aspect stores statistical information in an object of type
+\type{Statistics}. As of now, the aspect needs to be initialized at the point in
+time where it is desired that it starts its data gathering. At any point in time
+the statistics aspect can be queried for a snapshot of the current statistics.
+
+The \type{Statistics} class also includes functionality for generating a report
+of its gathered statistics. The report can be given either as a string or it can
+be written to a file.
+
+\subsection{Advices}
+The statistics aspect contains advices for gathering statistical data from
+different parts of the benchmarking process. It captures statistics from both
+the analysis part and the execution part of the composite \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring.
+
+For the analysis part, there are advices to count the number of text selections
+analyzed and the number of methods, types, compilation units and packages
+analyzed. There are also advices that counts for how many of the methods there
+are found a selection that is a candidate for the refactoring, and for how many
+methods there are not.
+
+There exist advices for counting both the successful and unsuccessful executions
+of all the refactorings. Both for the \ExtractMethod and \MoveMethod
+refactorings in isolation, as well as for the combination of them.
+
+\section{Optimizations}
+When looking for possible optimizations for the benchmarking process, I used the
+\name{VisualVM}\footnote{\url{http://visualvm.java.net/}} \gloss{profiler} for
+the Java Virtual Machine to both profile the application and also to make memory
+dumps of its heap.
+
+\subsection{Caching}
+When \gloss{profiling} the benchmark process before making any optimizations, it
+early became apparent that the parsing of source code was a place to direct
+attention towards. This discovery was done when only \emph{analyzing} source
+code, before trying to do any \emph{manipulation} of it. Caching of the parsed
+ASTs seemed like the best way to save some time, as expected. With only a simple
+cache of the most recently used AST, the analysis time was speeded up by a
+factor of around 20. This number depends a little upon which type of system the
+analysis is run.
+
+The caching is managed by a cache manager, that now, by default, utilizes the
+not so well known feature of Java called a \emph{soft reference}. Soft
+references are best explained in the context of weak references. A \emph{weak
+reference} is a reference to an object instance that is only guaranteed to
+persist as long as there is a \emph{strong reference} or a soft reference
+referring the same object. If no such reference is found, its referred object is
+garbage collected. A strong reference is basically the same as a regular Java
+reference. A soft reference has the same guarantees as a week reference when it
+comes to its relation to strong references, but it is not necessarily garbage
+collected if there are no strong references to it. A soft reference \emph{may}
+reside in memory as long as the JVM has enough free memory in the heap. A soft
+reference will therefore usually perform better than a weak reference when used
+for simple caching and similar tasks. The way to use a soft/weak reference is to
+as it for its referent. The return value then has to be tested to check that it
+is not \var{null}. For the basic usage of soft references, see
+\myref{lst:softReferenceExample}. For a more thorough explanation of weak
+references in general, see\citing{weakRef2006}.
+
+\begin{listing}[h]
+\begin{minted}{java}
+// Strong reference
+Object strongRef = new Object();
+
+// Soft reference
+SoftReference<Object> softRef =
+ new SoftReference<Object>(new Object());
+
+// Using the soft reference
+Object obj = softRef.get();
+if (obj != null) {
+ // Use object here
+}
+\end{minted}
+\caption{Showing the basic usage of soft references. Weak references is used the
+ same way. {\footnotesize (The references are part of the \code{java.lang.ref}
+package.)}}
+\label{lst:softReferenceExample}
+\end{listing}
+
+The cache based on soft references has no limit for how many ASTs it caches. It
+is generally not advisable to keep references to ASTs for prolonged periods of
+time, since they are expensive structures to hold on to. For regular plugin
+development, \name{Eclipse} recommends not creating more than one AST at a time to
+limit memory consumption. Since the benchmarking has nothing to do with user
+experience, and throughput is everything, these advices are intentionally
+ignored. This means that during the benchmarking process, the target \name{Eclipse}
+application may very well work close to its memory limit for the heap space for
+long periods during the benchmark.
+
+\subsection{Candidates stored as mementos}
+When performing large scale analysis of source code for finding candidates to
+the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring, memory is an issue. One of the inputs to
+the refactoring is a variable binding. This variable binding indirectly retains
+a whole AST. Since ASTs are large structures, this quickly leads to an
+\type{OutOfMemoryError} if trying to analyze a large project without optimizing
+how we store the candidates' data. This means that the JVM cannot allocate more
+memory for our benchmark, and it exits disgracefully.
+
+A possible solution could be to just allow the JVM to allocate even more memory,
+but this is not a dependable solution. The allocated memory could easily
+supersede the physical memory of a machine, which would make the benchmark go
+really slow.
+
+Thus, the candidates' data must be stored in another format. Therefore, we use
+the \gloss{mementoPattern} to store variable binding information. This is done
+in a way that makes it possible to retrieve a variable binding at a later point.
+The data that is stored to achieve this, is the key to the original variable
+binding. In addition to the key, we know which method and text selection the
+variable is referenced in, so that we can find it by parsing the source code and
+search for it when it is needed.
+
+\section{Handling failures}
+\todoin{write}
+
+
+\chapter{Case studies}
+
+In this chapter I am going to present a few case studies. This is done to give
+an impression of how the search-based \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+performs when giving it a larger project to take on. I will try to answer where
+it lacks, in terms of completeness, as well as showing its effect on refactored
+source code.
+
+The first and primary case, is refactoring source code from the \name{Eclipse
+JDT UI} project. The project is chosen because it is a well-known open-source
+project, still in development, with a large code base that is written by many
+different people over several years. The code is installed in a large number of
+\name{Eclipse} applications worldwide, and many other projects build on the
+Eclipse platform. For a long time, it was even the official IDE for Android
+development. All this means that Eclipse must be seen as a good representative
+for professionally written Java source code. It is also the home for most of the
+JDT refactoring code.
+
+For the second case, the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring is fed the
+\code{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project. This is done as a variation of the
+``dogfooding'' methodology.
+
+\section{The tools}
+For conducting these experiments, three software tools are used. Two of the
+tools both use Eclipse as their platform. The first is our own tool, described
+in \myref{sec:benchmarking}, written to be able to run the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring as a batch process. It analyzes and refactors all the methods of a
+project in sequence. The second is JUnit, which is used for running the
+project's own unit tests on the target code both before and after it is
+refactored. The last tool that is used is a code quality management tool, called
+\name{SonarQube}. It can be used to perform different tasks for assuring code
+quality, but we are only going to take advantage of one of its main features,
+namely quality profiles.
+
+A quality profile is used to define a set of coding rules that a project is
+supposed to comply with. Failure to following these rules will be recorded as
+so-called ``issues'', marked as having one of several degrees of severities,
+ranging from ``info'' to ``blocker'', where the latter one is the most severe.
+The measurements done for these case studies are therefore not presented as
+fine-grained software metrics results, but rather as the number of issues for
+each defined rule.
+
+In its analysis, \name{SonarQube} discriminates between functions and accessors.
+Accessors are methods that are recognized as setters or getters.
+
+In addition to the coding rules defined through quality profiles,
+\name{SonarQube} calculates the complexity of source code. The metric that is
+used is cyclomatic complexity, developed by Thomas J. McCabe in
+1976\citing{mccabeComplexity1976}. In this metric, functions have an initial
+complexity of 1, and whenever the control flow of a function splits, the
+complexity increases by
+one\footnote{\url{http://docs.codehaus.org/display/SONAR/Metric+definitions}}.
+Accessors are not counted in the complexity analysis.
+
+Specifications for the computer used during the experiments are shown in
+\myref{tab:experimentComputerSpecs}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Specifications for experiment computer.}
+ \label{tab:experimentComputerSpecs}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{0.35}R{1.65}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \spancols{2}{Hardware} \\
+ \midrule
+ Model & Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 \\
+ Processor & Intel\textregistered{} Core\texttrademark{}
+ i5-3210M\linebreak[4] (2.5 GHz/3.1 GHz (turbo),
+ 2 cores, 4 threads, 3 MB Cache) \\
+ Memory & 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz \\
+ Storage & 500 GB HDD (7200 RPM) + 16 GB SSD Cache for Lenovo Hard Disk Drive
+ Performance Booster \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Operating system} \\
+ \midrule
+ Distribution & Ubuntu 12.10 \\
+ Kernel & Linux 3.5.0-49-generic (x86\_64) \\
+
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+
+\section{The \name{SonarQube} quality profile}
+The quality profile that is used with \name{SonarQube} in these case studies has got
+the name \name{IFI Refaktor Case Study} (version 6). The rules defined in the
+profile are chosen because they are the available rules found in \name{SonarQube} that
+measures complexity and coupling. Now follows a description of the rules in the
+quality profile. The values that are set for these rules are listed in
+\myref{tab:qualityProfile1}.
-\chapter{Eclipse Bugs Found}
+\begin{description}
+ \item[Avoid too complex class] is a rule that measures cyclomatic complexity
+ for every statement in the body of a class, except for setters and getter.
+ The threshold value set is its default value of 200.
+
+ \item[Classes should not be coupled to too many other classes ] is a rule that
+ measures how many other classes a class depends upon. It does not count the
+ dependencies of nested classes. It is meant to promote the Single
+ Responsibility Principle. The metric for the rule resembles the CBO metric
+ that is described in \myref{sec:CBO}, but is only considering outgoing
+ dependencies. The max value for the rule is chosen on the basis of an
+ empirical study by Raed Shatnawi, which concludes that the number 9 is the
+ most useful threshold for the CBO metric\citing{shatnawiQuantitative2010}.
+ This study is also performed on Eclipse source code, so this threshold value
+ should be particularly well suited for the Eclipse JDT UI case in this
+ chapter.
+
+ \item[Control flow statements \ldots{} should not be nested too deeply] is
+ a rule that is meant to counter ``Spaghetti code''. It measures the nesting
+ level of \emph{if}, \emph{for}, \emph{while}, \emph{switch} and \emph{try}
+ statements. The nesting levels start at 1. The max value set is its default
+ value of 3.
+
+ \item[Methods should not be too complex] is a rule that measures cyclomatic
+ complexity the same way as the ``Avoid too complex class'' rule. The max
+ value used is 10, which ``seems like a reasonable, but not magical, upper
+ limit``\citing{mccabeComplexity1976}.
+
+ \item[Methods should not have too many lines] is a rule that simply measures
+ the number of lines in methods. A threshold value of 20 is used for this
+ metric. This is based on my own subjective opinions, as the default value of
+ 100 describes method bodies that do not even fit on most screens.
+
+ \item[NPath Complexity] is a rule that measures the number of possible
+ execution paths through a function. The value used is the default value of
+ 200, which seems like a recognized threshold for this metric.
+
+ \item[Too many methods] is a rule that measures the number of methods in a
+ class. The threshold value used is the default value of 10.
+
+\end{description}
+
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{The \name{IFI Refaktor Case Study} quality profile (version 6).}
+ \label{tab:qualityProfile1}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1.5}R{0.5}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \textbf{Rule} & \textbf{Max value} \\
+ \midrule
+ Avoid too complex class & 200 \\
+ Classes should not be coupled to too many other classes (Single
+ Responsibility Principle) & 9 \\
+ Control flow statements \ldots{} should not be nested too deeply &
+ 3 \\
+ Methods should not be too complex & 10 \\
+ Methods should not have too many lines & 20 \\
+ NPath Complexity & 200 \\
+ Too many methods & 10 \\
+
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\section{The input}
+A precondition for the source code that is going to be the target for a series
+of \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactorings, is that it is organized as an Eclipse
+project. It is also assumed that the code is free from compilation errors.
+
+\section{The experiment}
+For a given project, the first job that is done, is to refactor its source code.
+The refactoring batch job produces three things: The refactored project,
+statistics gathered during the execution of the series of refactorings, and an
+error log describing any errors happening during this execution. See
+\myref{sec:benchmarking} for more information about how the refactorings are
+performed.
+
+After the refactoring process is done, the before- and after-code is analyzed
+with \name{SonarQube}. The analysis results are then stored in a database and
+displayed through a \name{SonarQube} server with a web interface.
+
+The before- and after-code is also tested with their own unit tests. This is
+done to discover any changes in the semantic behavior of the refactored code,
+within the limits of these tests.
+
+\section{Case 1: The Eclipse JDT UI project}
+This case is the ultimate test for our \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring. The
+target source code is massive. With its over 300,000 lines of code\footnote{For
+ all uses of ``lines of code'' we follow the definition from \name{SonarQube}.
+LOC = the number of physical lines containing a character which is neither
+whitespace or part of a comment.} and over 25,000 methods, it is a formidable
+task to perform automated changes on it. There should be plenty of situations
+where things can go wrong, and, as we shall see later, they do.
+
+I will start by presenting some statistics from the refactoring execution,
+before I pick apart the \name{SonarQube} analysis and conclude by commenting on
+the results from the unit tests. The configuration for the experiment is
+specified in \myref{tab:configurationCase1}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Configuration for Case 1.}
+ \label{tab:configurationCase1}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{0.67}L{1.33}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \spancols{2}{Benchmark data} \\
+ \midrule
+ Launch configuration & CaseStudy.launch \\
+ Project & no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark \\
+ Repository & gitolite@git.uio.no:ifi-stolz-refaktor \\
+ Commit & 43c16c04520746edd75f8dc2a1935781d3d9de6c \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Input data} \\
+ \midrule
+ Project & org.eclipse.jdt.ui \\
+ Repository & git://git.eclipse.org/gitroot/jdt/eclipse.jdt.ui.git \\
+ Commit & f218388fea6d4ec1da7ce22432726c244888bb6b \\
+ Branch & R3\_8\_maintenance \\
+ Tests suites & org.eclipse.jdt.ui.tests.AutomatedSuite,
+ org.eclipse.jdt.ui.tests.refactoring.all.\-AllAllRefactoringTests \\
+
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+\subsection{Statistics}
+The statistics gathered during the refactoring execution is presented in
+\myref{tab:case1Statistics}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Statistics after batch refactoring the Eclipse JDT UI project with
+ the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.}
+ \label{tab:case1Statistics}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1.5}R{0.5}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \spancols{2}{Time used} \\
+ \midrule
+ Total time & 98m38s \\
+ Analysis time & 14m41s (15\%) \\
+ Change time & 74m20s (75\%) \\
+ Miscellaneous tasks & 9m37s (10\%) \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Numbers of each type of entity analyzed} \\
+ \midrule
+ Packages & 110 \\
+ Compilation units & 2,097 \\
+ Types & 3,152 \\
+ Methods & 27,667 \\
+ Text selections & 591,500 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Numbers for \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring candidates} \\
+ \midrule
+ Methods chosen as candidates & 2,552 \\
+ Methods NOT chosen as candidates & 25,115 \\
+ Candidate selections (multiple per method) & 36,843 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactorings executed} \\
+ \midrule
+ Fully executed & 2,469 \\
+ Not fully executed & 83 \\
+ Total attempts & 2,552 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Primitive refactorings executed} \\
+ \spancols{2}{\small \ExtractMethod refactorings} \\
+ \midrule
+ Performed & 2,483 \\
+ Not performed & 69 \\
+ Total attempts & 2,552 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{\small \MoveMethod refactorings} \\
+ \midrule
+ Performed & 2469 \\
+ Not performed & 14 \\
+ Total attempts & 2,483 \\
+
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsubsection{Execution time}
+I consider the total execution time of approximately 1.5 hours, on a regular
+laptop computer, as being acceptable. It clearly makes the batch process
+unsuitable for doing any on-demand analysis or changes, but it is good enough
+for running periodic jobs, like over-night analysis.
+
+As the statistics show, 75\% of the total time goes into making the actual code
+changes. The time consumers are here the primitive \ExtractMethod and
+\MoveMethod refactorings. Included in the change time is the parsing and
+precondition checking done by the refactorings, as well as textual changes done
+to files on disk. All this parsing and disk access is time-consuming, and
+constitutes a large part of the change time.
+
+In comparison, the pure analysis time, used to find suitable candidates, only
+makes up for 15\% of the total time consumed. This includes analyzing almost
+600,000 text selections, while the number of attempted executions of the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring is only about 2,500. So the number of executed
+primitive refactorings is approximately 5,000. Assuming the time used on
+miscellaneous tasks are used mostly for parsing source code for the analysis, we
+can say that the time used for analyzing code is at most 25\% of the total time.
+This means that for every primitive refactoring executed, we can analyze around
+360 text selections. So, with an average of about 21 text selections per method,
+ it is reasonable to say that we can analyze over 15 methods in the time it
+ takes to perform a primitive refactoring.
+
+\subsubsection{Refactoring candidates}
+Out of the 27,667 methods that were analyzed, 2,552 methods contained selections
+that were considered candidates for the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring. This
+is roughly 9\% off the methods in the project. These 9\% of the methods had on
+average 14.4 text selections that were considered possible refactoring
+candidates.
+
+\subsubsection{Executed refactorings}
+2,469 out of 2,552 attempts on executing the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+were successful, giving a success rate of 96.7\%. The failure rate of 3.3\%
+stems from situations where the analysis finds a candidate selection, but the
+change execution fails. This failure could be an exception that was thrown, and
+the refactoring aborts. It could also be the precondition checking for one of
+the primitive refactorings that gives us an error status, meaning that if the
+refactoring proceeds, the code will contain compilation errors afterwards,
+forcing the composite refactoring to abort. This means that if the
+\ExtractMethod refactoring fails, no attempt is done for the \MoveMethod
+refactoring. \todo{Redundant information? Put in benchmark chapter?}
+
+Out of the 2,552 \ExtractMethod refactorings that were attempted executed, 69 of
+them failed. This gives a failure rate of 2.7\% for the primitive refactoring.
+In comparison, the \MoveMethod refactoring had a failure rate of 0.6 \% of the
+2,483 attempts on the refactoring.
+
+The failure rates for the refactorings are not that bad, if we also take into
+account that the pre-refactoring analysis is incomplete.\todo{see \ldots}
+
+\subsection{\name{SonarQube} analysis}
+Results from the \name{SonarQube} analysis are shown in
+\myref{tab:case1ResultsProfile1}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Results for analyzing the Eclipse JDT UI project, before and after
+ the refactoring, with \name{SonarQube} and the \name{IFI Refaktor Case Study}
+ quality profile. (Bold numbers are better.)}
+ \label{tab:case1ResultsProfile1}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1.5}R{0.25}R{0.25}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \textnormal{Number of issues for each rule} & Before & After \\
+ \midrule
+ Avoid too complex class & 81 & \textbf{79} \\
+ Classes should not be coupled to too many other classes (Single
+ Responsibility Principle) & \textbf{1,098} & 1,199 \\
+ Control flow statements \ldots{} should not be nested too deeply & 1,375 &
+ \textbf{1,285} \\
+ Methods should not be too complex & 1,518 & \textbf{1,452} \\
+ Methods should not have too many lines & 3,396 & \textbf{3,291} \\
+ NPath Complexity & 348 & \textbf{329} \\
+ Too many methods & \textbf{454} & 520 \\
+ \midrule
+ Total number of issues & 8,270 & \textbf{8,155} \\
+ \midrule
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{3}{Complexity} \\
+ \midrule
+ Per function & 3.6 & \textbf{3.3} \\
+ Per class & \textbf{29.5} & 30.4 \\
+ Per file & \textbf{44.0} & 45.3 \\
+ \midrule
+ Total complexity & \textbf{84,765} & 87,257 \\
+ \midrule
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{3}{Numbers of each type of entity analyzed} \\
+ \midrule
+ Files & 1,926 & 1,926 \\
+ Classes & 2,875 & 2,875 \\
+ Functions & 23,744 & 26,332 \\
+ Accessors & 1,296 & 1,019 \\
+ Statements & 162,768 & 165,145 \\
+ Lines of code & 320,941 & 329,112 \\
+ \midrule
+ Technical debt (in days) & \textbf{1,003.4} & 1,032.7 \\
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsubsection{Diversity in the number of entities analyzed}
+The analysis performed by \name{SonarQube} is reporting fewer methods than found
+by the pre-refactoring analysis. \name{SonarQube} discriminates between
+functions (methods) and accessors, so the 1,296 accessors play a part in this
+calculation. \name{SonarQube} also has the same definition as our plugin when
+it comes to how a class is defined. Therefore it seems like \name{SonarQube}
+misses 277 classes that our plugin handles. This can explain why the {SonarQube}
+report differs from our numbers by approximately 2,500 methods,
+
+\subsubsection{Complexity}
+On all complexity rules that works on the method level, the number of issues
+decreases with between 3.1\% and 6.5\% from before to after the refactoring. The
+average complexity of a method decreases from 3.6 to 3.3, which is an
+improvement of about 8.3\%. So, on the method level, the refactoring must be
+said to have a slightly positive impact. This is due to the extraction of a lot
+of methods, making the average method size smaller.
+
+The improvement in complexity on the method level is somewhat traded for
+complexity on the class level. The complexity per class metric is worsened by
+3\% from before to after. The issues for the ``Too many methods'' rule also
+increases by 14.5\%. These numbers indicate that the refactoring makes quite a
+lot of the classes a little more complex overall. This is the expected outcome,
+since the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring introduces almost 2,500 new methods
+into the project.
+
+The only number that can save the refactoring's impact on complexity on the
+class level, is the ``Avoid too complex class'' rule. It improves with 2.5\%,
+thus indicating that the complexity is moderately better distributed between the
+classes after the refactoring than before.
+
+\subsubsection{Coupling}
+One of the hopes when starting this project, was to be able to make a
+refactoring that could lower the coupling between classes. Better complexity at
+the method level is a not very unexpected byproduct of dividing methods into
+smaller parts. Lowering the coupling on the other hand, is a far greater task.
+This is also reflected in the results for the only coupling rule defined in the
+\name{SonarQube} quality profile, namely the ``Classes should not be coupled to
+too many
+other classes (Single Responsibility Principle)'' rule.
+
+The number of issues for the coupling rule is 1,098 before the refactoring, and
+1,199 afterwards. This is an increase in issues of 9.2\%. These numbers can be
+interpreted two ways. The first possibility is that our assumptions are wrong,
+and that increasing indirection does not decrease coupling between classes. The
+other possibility is that our analysis and choices of candidate text selections
+are not good enough. I vote for the second possibility. (Voting against the
+public opinion may also be a little bold.)
+
+\subsubsection{An example of what makes the number of dependency issues grow}
+\Myref{lst:sonarJDTExampleBefore} shows a portion of the class
+\typewithref{org.eclipse.jdt.ui.actions}{ShowActionGroup} from the JDT UI
+project before it is refactored with the search-based \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring. Before the refactoring, the \type{ShowActionGroup} class has 12
+outgoing dependencies (reported by \name{SonarQube}).
+
+\begin{listing}[htb]
+\begin{minted}[linenos,samepage]{java}
+public class ShowActionGroup extends ActionGroup {
+ /* ... */
+ private void initialize(IWorkbenchSite site,
+ boolean isJavaEditor) {
+ fSite= site;
+ ISelectionProvider provider= fSite.getSelectionProvider();
+ ISelection selection= provider.getSelection();
+ fShowInPackagesViewAction.update(selection);
+ if (!isJavaEditor) {
+ provider.addSelectionChangedListener(
+ fShowInPackagesViewAction);
+ }
+ }
+}
+\end{minted}
+\caption{Portion of the \type{ShowActionGroup} class before refactoring.}
+\label{lst:sonarJDTExampleBefore}
+\end{listing}
+
+During the benchmark process, the search-based \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+extracts the lines 6 to 12 of the code in \myref{lst:sonarJDTExampleBefore}, and
+moves the new method to the move target, which is the field
+\var{fShowInPackagesViewAction} with type
+\typewithref{org.eclipse.jdt.ui.actions}{ShowInPackageViewAction}. The result is
+shown in \myref{lst:sonarJDTExampleAfter}.
+
+\begin{listing}[htb]
+\begin{minted}[linenos,samepage]{java}
+public class ShowActionGroup extends ActionGroup {
+ /* ... */
+ private void initialize(IWorkbenchSite site,
+ boolean isJavaEditor) {
+ fSite= site;
+ fShowInPackagesViewAction.generated_8019497110545412081(
+ this, isJavaEditor);
+ }
+}
+\end{minted}
+
+\begin{minted}[linenos,samepage]{java}
+public class ShowInPackageViewAction
+ extends SelectionDispatchAction {
+ /* ... */
+ public void generated_8019497110545412081(
+ ShowActionGroup showactiongroup, boolean isJavaEditor) {
+ ISelectionProvider provider=
+ showactiongroup.fSite.getSelectionProvider();
+ ISelection selection= provider.getSelection();
+ update(selection);
+ if (!isJavaEditor) {
+ provider.addSelectionChangedListener(this);
+ }
+ }
+}
+\end{minted}
+\caption{Portions of the classes \type{ShowActionGroup} and
+\type{ShowInPackageViewAction} after refactoring.}
+\label{lst:sonarJDTExampleAfter}
+\end{listing}
+
+After the refactoring, the \type{ShowActionGroup} has only 11 outgoing
+dependencies. It no longer depends on the
+\typewithref{org.eclipse.jface.viewers}{ISelection} type. So our refactoring
+managed to get rid of one dependency, which is exactly what we wanted. The only
+problem is, that now the \type{ShowInPackageViewAction} class has got two new
+dependencies, in the \type{ISelectionProvider} and the \type{ISelection} types.
+The bottom line is that we eliminated one dependency, but introduced two more,
+ending up with a program that has more dependencies now than when we started.
+
+What can happen in many situations where the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+is performed, is that the \MoveMethod refactoring ``drags'' with it references
+to classes that are unknown to the method destination. If the refactoring
+happens to be so lucky that it removes a dependency from one class, it might as
+well introduce a couple of new dependencies to another class, as shown in the
+previous example. In those situations where a destination class does not know
+about the originating class of a moved method, the \MoveMethod refactoring most
+certainly will introduce a dependency. This is because there is a
+bug\footnote{\href{https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show\_bug.cgi?id=228635}{Eclipse
+Bug 228635 - [move method] unnecessary reference to source}} in the refactoring,
+making it pass an instance of the originating class as a reference to the moved
+method, regardless of whether the reference is used in the method body or not.
+
+There is also the possibility that the heuristics used to find candidate text
+selections are not good enough. There is work to be done with fine-tuning the
+heuristics and to complete the analysis part of this project.
+
+\subsubsection{Totals}
+On the bright side, the total number of issues is lower after the refactoring
+than it was before. Before the refactoring, the total number of issues was
+8,270, and after it is 8,155. This is an improvement of 1.4\%.
+
+The down side is that \name{SonarQube} shows that the total cyclomatic
+complexity has increased by 2.9\%, and that the (more questionable) ``technical
+debt'' has increased from 1,003.4 to 1,032.7 days, also a deterioration of
+2.9\%. Although these numbers are similar, no correlation has been found
+between them.
+
+\subsection{Unit tests}
+The tests that have been run for the \name{Eclipse JDT UI} project, are the
+test suites specified as the main test suites on the JDT UI wiki page on how to
+contribute to the
+project\footnote{\url{https://wiki.eclipse.org/JDT\_UI/How\_to\_Contribute\#Unit\_Testing}}.
+The results from these tests are shown in \myref{tab:case1UnitTests}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Results from the unit tests run for the Eclipse JDT UI project,
+ before and after the refactoring.}
+ \label{tab:case1UnitTests}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1}R{0.5}R{0.5}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \textnormal{AutomatedSuite} & Before & After \\
+ \midrule
+ Runs & 2007/2007 & 2007/2007 \\
+ Errors & 4 & 565 \\
+ Failures & 3 & 5 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{AllAllRefactoringTests} \\
+ \midrule
+ Runs & 3815/3816 & 3815/3816 \\
+ Errors & 2 & 2257 \\
+ Failures & 3 & 0 \\
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsubsection{Before the refactoring}
+Running the tests for the before-code of Eclipse JDT UI yielded 4 errors and 3
+failures for the \type{AutomatedSuite} test suite (2,007 test cases), and 2
+errors and 3 failures for the \type{AllAllRefactoringTests} test suite (3,816
+test cases).
+
+\subsubsection{After the refactoring}
+For the after-code of the Eclipse JDT UI project, Eclipse reports that the
+project contains 322 compilation errors, and a lot of other errors that
+follow from these. All of the errors are caused by the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring. Had these errors originated from only one bug, it would not have
+been much of a problem, but this is not the case. By only looking at some random
+compilation problems in the refactored code, I came up with at least four
+different bugs \todo{write bug reports?} that caused those problems. I then
+stopped looking for more, since some of the bugs would take more time to fix
+than I could justify using on them at this point.
+
+One thing that can be said in my defense, is that all the compilation errors
+could have been avoided if the types of situations that cause them were properly
+handled by the primitive refactorings, which again are supplied by the Eclipse
+JDT UI project. All four bugs that I mentioned before are weaknesses of the
+\MoveMethod refactoring. If the primitive refactorings had detected the
+up-coming errors in their precondition checking phase, the refactorings would
+have been aborted, since this is how the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+handles such situations. This shows that it is not safe to completely rely upon
+the primitive refactorings to save us if our own pre-refactoring analysis fails
+to detect that a compilation error will be introduced. A problem is that the
+source code analysis done by both the JDT refactorings and our own tool is
+incomplete.
+
+Of course, taking into account all possible situations that could lead to
+compilation errors is an immense task. A complete analysis of these situations
+is too big of a problem for this master's project to solve. Looking at it now,
+this comes as no surprise, since the task is obviously also too big for the
+creators of the primitive \MoveMethod refactoring.
+
+Considering all these problems, it is difficult to know how to interpret the
+unit test results from after refactoring the Eclipse JDT UI. The
+\type{AutomatedSuite} reported 565 errors and 5 failures, which means that 1437,
+or 71.6\%, of the tests still passed. Three of the failures were the same as
+reported before the refactoring took place, so two of them are new. For these
+two cases it is not immediately apparent what makes them behave differently. The
+program is so complex that to analyze it to find this out, we might need more
+powerful methods than just manually analyzing its source code. This is somewhat
+characteristic for imperative programming: The programs are often hard to
+analyze and understand.
+
+For the \type{AllAllRefactoringTests} test suite, the three failures are gone,
+but the two errors have grown to 2,257 errors. I will not try to analyze those
+errors.
+
+What I can say at this point, is that it is likely that the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring has introduced some unintentional behavioral
+changes. Let us say that the refactoring introduces at least two
+behavior-altering changes for every 2,500 executions. More than that is
+difficult to say about the behavior-preserving properties of the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring, at this point.
+
+\subsection{Conclusions}
+After automatically analyzing and executing the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring for all the methods in the Eclipse JDT UI project, the results do
+not look that promising. For this case, the refactoring seems almost unusable as
+it is now. The error rate and measurements tell us this.
+
+The refactoring makes the code a little less complex at the method level. But
+this is merely a side effect of extracting methods. When it comes to the overall
+complexity, it is increased, although it is slightly better spread among the
+classes.
+
+The analysis done before the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring, is currently not
+complete enough to make the refactoring useful. It introduces too many errors in
+the code, and the code may change its behavior. It also remains to prove that
+large scale refactoring with it can decrease coupling between classes. A better
+analysis may prove this, but in its present state, the opposite is the fact. The
+coupling measurements done by \name{SonarQube} show this.
+
+On the bright side, the performance of the refactoring process is not that bad.
+It shows that it is possible to make a tool the way we do, if we can make the
+tool do anything useful. As long as the analysis phase is not going to involve
+anything that uses too much disk access, a lot of analysis can be done in a
+reasonable amount of time.
+
+The time used on performing the actual changes excludes a trial and error
+approach with the tools used in this master's project. In a trial and error
+approach, you could for instance be using the primitive refactorings used in
+this project to refactor code, and only then make decisions based on the effect,
+possibly shown by traditional software metrics. The problem with the approach
+taken in this project, compared to a trial and error approach, is that using
+heuristics beforehand is much more complicated. But on the other hand, a trial
+and error approach would still need to face the challenges of producing code
+that does compile without errors. If using refactorings that could produce
+in-memory changes, a trial and error approach could be made more efficient.
+
+\section{Case 2: The \type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project}
+In this case we will see a form of the ``dogfooding'' methodology used, when
+refactoring our own \type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project with the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+
+In this case I will try to point out some differences from the first case, and
+how they impact the execution of the benchmark. The refaktor project is 39 times
+smaller than the Eclipse JDT UI project, measured in lines of code. This will
+make things a bit more transparent. It will therefore be interesting to see if
+this case can shed light on any aspect of our project that were lost in the
+larger case 1.
+
+The configuration for the experiment is specified in
+\myref{tab:configurationCase2}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Configuration for Case 2.}
+ \label{tab:configurationCase2}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{0.67}L{1.33}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \spancols{2}{Benchmark data} \\
+ \midrule
+ Launch configuration & CaseStudyDogfooding.launch \\
+ Project & no.uio.ifi.refaktor.benchmark \\
+ Repository & gitolite@git.uio.no:ifi-stolz-refaktor \\
+ Commit & 43c16c04520746edd75f8dc2a1935781d3d9de6c \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Input data} \\
+ \midrule
+ Project & no.uio.ifi.refaktor \\
+ Repository & gitolite@git.uio.no:ifi-stolz-refaktor \\
+ Commit & 43c16c04520746edd75f8dc2a1935781d3d9de6c \\
+ Branch & master \\
+ Test configuration & no.uio.ifi.refaktor.tests/ExtractTest.launch \\
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsection{Statistics}
+The statistics gathered during the refactoring execution is presented in
+\myref{tab:case2Statistics}.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Statistics after batch refactoring the \type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor}
+project with the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.}
+ \label{tab:case2Statistics}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1.5}R{0.5}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \spancols{2}{Time used} \\
+ \midrule
+ Total time & 1m15s \\
+ Analysis time & 0m18s (24\%) \\
+ Change time & 0m47s (63\%) \\
+ Miscellaneous tasks & 0m10s (14\%) \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Numbers of each type of entity analyzed} \\
+ \midrule
+ Packages & 33 \\
+ Compilation units & 154 \\
+ Types & 168 \\
+ Methods & 1,070 \\
+ Text selections & 8,609 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Numbers for \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring candidates} \\
+ \midrule
+ Methods chosen as candidates & 58 \\
+ Methods NOT chosen as candidates & 1,012 \\
+ Candidate selections (multiple per method) & 227 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactorings executed} \\
+ \midrule
+ Fully executed & 53 \\
+ Not fully executed & 5 \\
+ Total attempts & 58 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{Primitive refactorings executed} \\
+ \spancols{2}{\small \ExtractMethod refactorings} \\
+ \midrule
+ Performed & 56 \\
+ Not performed & 2 \\
+ Total attempts & 58 \\
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{2}{\small \MoveMethod refactorings} \\
+ \midrule
+ Performed & 53 \\
+ Not performed & 3 \\
+ Total attempts & 56 \\
+
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsubsection{Differences}
+There are some differences between the two projects that make them a little
+difficult to compare by performance.
+
+\paragraph{Different complexity.}
+Although the JDT UI project is 39 times greater than the refaktor project in
+terms of lines of code, it is only about 26 times its size measured in numbers
+of methods. This means that the methods in the refaktor project are smaller in
+average than in the JDT project. This is also reflected in the \name{SonarQube}
+report, where the complexity per method for the JDT project is 3.6, while the
+refaktor project has a complexity per method of 2.1.
+
+\paragraph{Number of selections per method.}
+The analysis for the JDT project processed 21 text selections per method in
+average. This number for the refaktor project is only 8 selections per method
+analyzed. This is a direct consequence of smaller methods.
+
+\paragraph{Different candidates to methods ratio.}
+The differences in how the projects are factored are also reflected in the
+ratios for how many methods that are chosen as candidates compared to the total
+number of methods analyzed. For the JDT project, 9\% of the methods were
+considered to be candidates, while for the refaktor project, only 5\% of the
+methods were chosen.
+
+\paragraph{The average number of possible candidate selection.}
+For the methods that are chosen as candidates, the average number of possible
+candidate selections for these methods differ quite much. For the JDT project,
+the number of possible candidate selections for these methods was 14.44
+selections per method, while the candidate methods in the refaktor project had
+only 3.91 candidate selections to choose from, in average.
+
+\subsubsection{Execution time}
+The differences in complexity, and the different candidate methods to total
+number of methods ratios, is shown in the distributions of the execution times.
+For the JDT project, 75\% of the total time was used on the actual changes,
+while for the refaktor project, this number was only 63\%.
+
+For the JDT project, the benchmark used on average 0.21 seconds per method in
+the project, while for the refaktor project it used only 0.07 seconds per
+method. So the process used 3 times as much time per method for the JDT project
+than for the refaktor project.
+
+While the JDT project is 39 times larger than the refaktor project measured in
+lines of code, the benchmark used about 79 times as long time on it than for the
+refaktor project. Relatively, this is about twice as long.
+
+Since the details of these execution times are not that relevant to this
+master's project, only their magnitude, I will leave them here.
+
+\subsubsection{Executed refactorings}
+For the composite \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring performed in case 2, 53
+successful attempts out of 58 gives a success rate of 91.4\%. This is 5.3
+percentage points worse than for the first case.
+
+\subsection{\name{SonarQube} analysis}
+Results from the \name{SonarQube} analysis are shown in
+\myref{tab:case2ResultsProfile1}.
+
+Not much is to be said about these results. The trends in complexity and
+coupling are the same. We end up a little worse after the refactoring process
+than before.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Results for analyzing the \var{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project, before
+ and after the refactoring, with \name{SonarQube} and the \name{IFI Refaktor
+ Case Study} quality profile. (Bold numbers are better.)}
+ \label{tab:case2ResultsProfile1}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1.5}R{0.25}R{0.25}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ \textnormal{Number of issues for each rule} & Before & After \\
+ \midrule
+ Avoid too complex class & 1 & 1 \\
+ Classes should not be coupled to too many other classes (Single
+ Responsibility Principle) & \textbf{29} & 34 \\
+ Control flow statements \ldots{} should not be nested too deeply & 24 &
+ \textbf{21} \\
+ Methods should not be too complex & 17 & \textbf{15} \\
+ Methods should not have too many lines & 41 & \textbf{40} \\
+ NPath Complexity & 3 & 3 \\
+ Too many methods & \textbf{13} & 15 \\
+ \midrule
+ Total number of issues & \textbf{128} & 129 \\
+ \midrule
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{3}{Complexity} \\
+ \midrule
+ Per function & 2.1 & 2.1 \\
+ Per class & \textbf{12.5} & 12.9 \\
+ Per file & \textbf{13.8} & 14.2 \\
+ \midrule
+ Total complexity & \textbf{2,089} & 2,148 \\
+ \midrule
+ \midrule
+ \spancols{3}{Numbers of each type of entity analyzed} \\
+ \midrule
+ Files & 151 & 151 \\
+ Classes & 167 & 167 \\
+ Functions & 987 & 1,045 \\
+ Accessors & 35 & 30 \\
+ Statements & 3,355 & 3,416 \\
+ Lines of code & 8,238 & 8,460 \\
+ \midrule
+ Technical debt (in days) & \textbf{19.0} & 20.7 \\
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsection{Unit tests}
+The tests used for this case are the same that has been developed throughout
+this master's project.
+
+The code that was refactored for this case suffered from some of the problems
+discovered in the first case. This means that the after-code for this case also
+contained compilation errors, but they were not as many. The code contained only
+6 errors that made the code not compile.
+
+All of the six errors originated from the same bug. The bug arises in a
+situation where a class instance creation is moved between packages, and the
+class for the instance is package-private. The \MoveMethod refactoring does not
+detect that there will be a visibility problem, and neither does it promote the
+package-private class to be public.
+
+Since the errors in the refactored refaktor code were easy to fix manually, I
+corrected them and ran the unit tests as planned. The unit test results are
+shown in \myref{tab:case2UnitTests}. Before the refactoring, all tests passed.
+All tests also passed after the refactoring, with the six error corrections.
+Since the corrections done are not of a kind that could make the behavior of the
+program change, it is likely that the refactorings done to the
+\type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project did not change its behavior. This is also
+supported by the informal experiment presented next.
+
+\begin{table}[htb]
+ \caption{Results from the unit tests run for the \type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor}
+project, before and after the refactoring (with 6 corrections done to the
+refactored code).}
+ \label{tab:case2UnitTests}
+ \centering
+ \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\bfseries}L{1}R{0.5}R{0.5}@{}}
+ \toprule
+ & Before & After \\
+ \midrule
+ Runs & 148/148 & 148/148 \\
+ Errors & 0 & 0 \\
+ Failures & 0 & 0 \\
+ \bottomrule
+ \end{tabularx}
+\end{table}
+
+\subsection{An additional experiment}
+To complete the task of ``eating my own dog food'', I conducted an experiment
+where I used the refactored version of the \type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project,
+with the corrections, to again refaktor ``itself''.
+
+The experiment produced code containing the same six errors as after the
+previous experiment. I also compared the after-code from the two experiments
+with a diff-tool. The only differences found were different method names. This
+is expected, since the method names are randomly generated by the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring.
+
+The outcome of this simple experiment makes me more confident that the
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring made only behavior-preserving changes to the
+\type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project, apart from the compilation errors.
+
+\subsection{Conclusions}
+The differences in complexity between the Eclipse JDT UI project and the
+\type{no.uio.ifi.refaktor} project, clearly influenced the differences in their
+execution times. This is mostly because fewer of the methods were chosen to be
+refactored for the refaktor project than for the JDT project. This makes it
+difficult to know if there are any severe performance penalties associated with
+refactoring on a large project compared to a small one.
+
+The trends in the \name{SonarQube} analysis are the same for this case as for
+the previous one. This gives more confidence in the these results.
+
+By refactoring our own code and using it again to refactor our code, we showed
+that it is possible to write an automated composite refactoring that works for
+many cases. That it probably did not alter the behavior of a smaller project
+shows us nothing more than that though, and might just be a coincidence.
+
+\section{Summary}
+\todoin{Write? Or wrap up in final conclusions?}
+\todoin{``Threats to validity''}
+
+
+\chapter{Conclusions and future work}
+This chapter will conclude this master's thesis. It will try to give justified
+answers to the research questions posed \see{sec:researchQuestions} and present
+some future work that could be done to take this project to the next level.
+
+\section{Conclusions}
+One of the motivations for this thesis was to create a fully automated composite
+refactoring that could be used to make program source code better in terms of
+coupling between classes. Earlier, in \mysimpleref{sec:CBO}, it was shown that a
+composition of the \ExtractMethod and the \MoveMethod refactorings reduces the
+coupling between two classes in an ideal situation. The Eclipse IDE implements
+both these refactorings, as well as providing a framework for analyzing source
+code, so it was considered a suitable tool to build upon for our project.
+
+The search-based \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring was created by utilizing the
+analysis and refactoring support of Eclipse, and a small framework was built
+for executing large scale refactoring with it. The refactoring was set up to
+analyze and execute changes on the Eclipse JDT UI project. Statistics was
+gathered during this process and the resulting code was analyzed through
+SonarQube. The project's own unit tests were also performed to find out if our
+refactoring introduces any behavior-altering changes in the code it refactor.
+
+\paragraph{Answering the main research question.}
+The first and greatest challenge was to find out if the \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring could be automated, in all tasks ranging from analysis to executing
+changes. It is now confirmed that this can be done, since it has been
+implemented as a part of the work done for this project. It has also been shown
+that the refactoring can be used to refactor large code bases, through the case
+study done on the Eclipse JDT UI project.
+
+If we ask if using the existing Eclipse refactorings for this task is
+\emph{easy}, this is another question. The refactorings provided by the JDT UI
+project are clearly not meant to be combined in any way. The preconditions for
+one refactoring are not always easily retrievable after the execution of
+another. Also, the refactorings are all assuming that the code they shall
+refactor is textualized. This means that the source code must be parsed between
+the executions of each refactoring. Another problem with this dependency on
+textual changes is that you cannot make a composition of two refactorings appear
+as one change if their changes overlap. This will make the undo-history of the
+refactoring show two changes instead of one, and is not nice for usability it
+the refactoring would be used as an on-demand refactoring in an IDE.
+
+Apart from the problems with implementing the actual refactoring, the analysis
+framework is quite nicely solved in Eclipse. The AST generated when parsing
+source code supports using visitors to traverse it, and this works without
+problems.
+
+\paragraph{Is the refactoring efficient enough?}
+Since we have concluded that the search-based \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring
+is not suitable for on-demand large scale refactoring, but may be put to better
+use as a kind of analysis tool, superb performance is not crucial. By being able
+to process over 300,000 pure lines of code in about 1.5 hours on a mid-level
+laptop computer, the refactoring must be said to perform well enough for this
+purpose. In comparison, the \name{SonarQube} analysis consumes about the same
+amount of time. If performed on demand for a single method, the performance of
+the \ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring is no issue.
+
+\paragraph{What about breaking the source code?}
+The case studies showed that our safety measures that rely on the precondition
+checking of the existing primitive refactorings are not good enough in practice.
+If we were going to assure that code we change compiles, we would need to
+consider all possible situations where the refactoring could fail and search for
+them in our analysis. It is an open question if this is even feasible. Our
+analysis is incomplete, and so is the analysis for the \ExtractMethod and the
+\MoveMethod refactorings.
+
+Our refactoring does not take any precautions to preserve behavior. A few
+running and failing unit test for the JDT UI project after the refactoring
+indicate that our refactoring probably causes some changes to the way a program
+behaves.
+
+\paragraph{Is the quality of the code improved?}
+For coupling, there is no evidence that the refactoring improves the quality of
+source code. Shall we believe the SonarQube analysis from the case studies, our
+refactoring makes classes more coupled after the refactoring than before, in the
+general case. This is probably because our analysis and heuristics for finding
+the best candidates for the refactoring are not adequate.
+
+\paragraph{Is the refactoring useful?}
+In its present state, the refactoring cannot be said to be very useful. It
+generates too many compilation errors for it to fall into that category. On the
+other hand, if the problems with the search-based \ExtractAndMoveMethod
+refactoring were to be solved it could be useful in some situations.
+
+If the refactoring was perfected, it could of course be used as a regular
+on-demand automated refactoring on a per method base (or per class, package or
+project).
+
+As it is now, the refactoring is not very well suited to be set to perform
+unattended refactoring. But if we could find a way to filter out the changes
+that create compilation errors, we could use the refactoring to look for
+improvement points in a software project. This process could for instance be
+scheduled to run at regular times, possibly after a nightly build or the like.
+Then the results could be made available, and an administrator could be set to
+review them and choose whether or not they should be performed.
+
+\section{Future work}
+An important part that is missing for making the search-based
+\ExtractAndMoveMethod refactoring more usable, is to complete the
+pre-refactoring analysis of the source code, to make sure that the refactoring
+does not introduce compilation errors when it is performed.
+
+The first point of making the static analysis complete brings up the next
+question: Is it feasible to complete such an analysis? Can this feasibility be
+proven, or disproved?
+
+Another shortcoming of this project is that we have no strategy for assuring
+safety when refactoring, so the code may end up behaving differently after the
+refactoring than it behaved before. Approaches toward safer refactorings are
+mentioned in \myref{sec:saferRefactoring}.
+
+The last important improvement that could be made to this project is to refine
+the heuristics that is used to find suitable refactoring candidates. This effort
+should in particular be directed toward making the heuristics choose candidates
+that do not introduce new dependencies for their destination classes.
+
+
+\appendix
+
+
+\chapter{Eclipse bugs submitted}
\newcommand{\submittedBugReport}[1]{The submitted bug report can be found on
\url{#1}.}
assigning to the parameter that is also the move
destination}\label{eclipse_bug_420726}
This bug
-was found when analyzing what kinds of names that was to be considered as
+was found when analyzing what kinds of names that were to be considered as
\emph{unfixes} \see{unfixes}.
-\subsection{The bug}
+\paragraph{The bug}
The bug emerges when trying to move a method from one class to another, and when
the target for the move (must be a variable, local or field) is both a parameter
variable and also is assigned to within the method body. \name{Eclipse} allows this to
in Java.
\submittedBugReport{https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show\_bug.cgi?id=420726}
-\subsection{The solution}
+\paragraph{The solution}
The solution to this problem is to add all simple names that are assigned to in
a method body to the set of unfixes.
I discovered
this bug during a batch change on the \type{org.eclipse.jdt.ui} project.
-\subsection{The bug}
+\paragraph{The bug}
This bug surfaces when trying to use the \refa{Move Method} refactoring to move a
method from an anonymous class to another class. This happens both for my
simulation as well as in \name{Eclipse}, through the user interface. It only occurs
-when \name{Eclipse} analyzes the program and finds it necessary to pass an instance of
-the originating class as a parameter to the moved method. I.e. it want to pass a
-\var{this} expression. The execution ends in an
+when \name{Eclipse} analyzes the program and finds it necessary to pass an
+instance of the originating class as a parameter to the moved method. I.e. it
+wants to pass a \var{this} expression. The execution ends in an
\typewithref{java.lang}{IllegalArgumentException} in
\typewithref{org.eclipse.jdt.core.dom}{SimpleName} and its
\method{setIdentifier(String)} method. The simple name is attempted created in
so the \type{MoveInstanceMethodProcessor} was early a clear suspect.
The \method{createInlinedMethodInvocation} is the method that creates a method
-invocation where the previous invocation to the method that was moved was. From
-its code it can be read that when a \var{this} expression is going to be passed
-in to the invocation, it shall be qualified with the name of the original
-method's declaring class, if the declaring class is either an anonymous class or
-a member class. The problem with this, is that an anonymous class does not have
-a name, hence the term \emph{anonymous} class! Therefore, when its name, an
-empty string, is passed into
+invocation where the previous invocation to the method that was moved was
+located. From its code it can be read that when a \var{this} expression is going
+to be passed in to the invocation, it shall be qualified with the name of the
+original method's declaring class, if the declaring class is either an anonymous
+class or a member class. The problem with this, is that an anonymous class does
+not have a name, hence the term \emph{anonymous} class! Therefore, when its
+name, an empty string, is passed into
\methodwithref{org.eclipse.jdt.core.dom.AST}{newSimpleName} it all ends in an
-\type{IllegalArgumentException}.
+\type{IllegalArgumentException}.
\submittedBugReport{https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show\_bug.cgi?id=429416}
-\subsection{How I solved the problem}
+\paragraph{How I solved the problem}
Since the \type{MoveInstanceMethodProcessor} is instantiated in the
\typewithref{no.uio.ifi.refaktor.change.executors}{MoveMethod\-RefactoringExecutor},
and only need to be a
\section{Eclipse bug 429954: Extracting statement with reference to local type
breaks code}\label{eclipse_bug_429954}
-The bug
-was discovered when doing some changes to the way unfixes is computed.
+The bug was discovered when doing some changes to the way unfixes is computed.
-\subsection{The bug}
+\paragraph{The bug}
The problem is that \name{Eclipse} is allowing selections that references variables of
local types to be extracted. When this happens the code is broken, since the
extracted method must take a parameter of a local type that is not in the
methods scope. The problem is illustrated in
-\myref{lst:extractMethod_LocalClass}, but there in another setting.
+\myref{lst:extractMethodLocalClass}, but there in another setting.
\submittedBugReport{https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show\_bug.cgi?id=429954}
-\subsection{Actions taken}
+\paragraph{Actions taken}
There are no actions directly springing out of this bug, since the Extract
Method refactoring cannot be meant to be this way. This is handled on the
-analysis stage of our \refa{Extract and Move Method} refactoring. So names representing
-variables of local types is considered unfixes \see{unfixes}.
-\todoin{write more when fixing this in legal statements checker}
-
-\chapter{Conclusions and Future Work}
-\todoin{Write}
-
-\section{Future work}
-\todoin{Copied from introduction:}
-For the metrics, I will at least measure the \metr{Coupling between object
-classes} (CBO) metric that is described by Chidamber and Kemerer in their
-article \tit{A Metrics Suite for Object Oriented
-Design}\citing{metricsSuite1994}.
-
-\ldots
-
-Then the effect of the change must be measured by calculating the chosen
-software metrics both before and after the execution.
-\todoin{Metrics, \ldots}
-
-\chapter{Related Work}
+analysis stage of our \refa{Extract and Move Method} refactoring. So names
+representing variables of local types are considered unfixes \see{unfixes}.
-\section{The compositional paradigm of refactoring}
-This paradigm builds upon the observation of Vakilian et
-al.\citing{vakilian2012}, that of the many automated refactorings existing in
-modern IDEs, the simplest ones are dominating the usage statistics. The report
-mainly focuses on \name{Eclipse} as the tool under investigation.
-
-The paradigm is described almost as the opposite of automated composition of
-refactorings \see{compositeRefactorings}. It works by providing the programmer
-with easily accessible primitive refactorings. These refactorings shall be
-accessed via keyboard shortcuts or quick-assist menus\footnote{Think
-quick-assist with Ctrl+1 in \name{Eclipse}} and be promptly executed, opposed to in the
-currently dominating wizard-based refactoring paradigm. They are meant to
-stimulate composing smaller refactorings into more complex changes, rather than
-doing a large upfront configuration of a wizard-based refactoring, before
-previewing and executing it. The compositional paradigm of refactoring is
-supposed to give control back to the programmer, by supporting \himher with an
-option of performing small rapid changes instead of large changes with a lesser
-degree of control. The report authors hope this will lead to fewer unsuccessful
-refactorings. It also could lower the bar for understanding the steps of a
-larger composite refactoring and thus also help in figuring out what goes wrong
-if one should choose to op in on a wizard-based refactoring.
-
-Vakilian and his associates have performed a survey of the effectiveness of the
-compositional paradigm versus the wizard-based one. They claim to have found
-evidence of that the \emph{compositional paradigm} outperforms the
-\emph{wizard-based}. It does so by reducing automation, which seem
-counterintuitive. Therefore they ask the question ``What is an appropriate level
-of automation?'', and thus questions what they feel is a rush toward more
-automation in the software engineering community.
\backmatter{}
git://git.uio.no / ifi-stolz-refaktor.git / blobdiff