An empirical investigation into the role of API-level refactorings during software evolution

2011 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) Pub Date : 2011-05-21 DOI:10.1145/1985793.1985815

Miryung Kim, Dongxiang Cai, Sunghun Kim

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引用次数: 146

Abstract

It is widely believed that refactoring improves software quality and programmer productivity by making it easier to maintain and understand software systems. However, the role of refactorings has not been systematically investigated using fine-grained evolution history. We quantitatively and qualitatively studied API-level refactorings and bug fixes in three large open source projects, totaling 26523 revisions of evolution. The study found several surprising results: One, there is an increase in the number of bug fixes after API-level refactorings. Two, the time taken to fix bugs is shorter after API-level refactorings than before. Three, a large number of refactoring revisions include bug fixes at the same time or are related to later bug fix revisions. Four, API-level refactorings occur more frequently before than after major software releases. These results call for re-thinking refactoring's true benefits. Furthermore, frequent floss refactoring mistakes observed in this study call for new software engineering tools to support safe application of refactoring and behavior modifying edits together.

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api级重构在软件演化过程中的作用的实证研究

人们普遍认为重构通过使维护和理解软件系统变得更容易，从而提高了软件质量和程序员的生产力。然而，重构的作用还没有使用细粒度的演化历史进行系统的研究。我们定量和定性地研究了三个大型开源项目中api级别的重构和bug修复，总共有26523个演进版本。研究发现了几个令人惊讶的结果:第一，在api级重构之后，bug修复的数量有所增加。第二，在api级重构之后，修复bug所花费的时间比以前要短。第三，大量的重构修订同时包含bug修复，或者与后来的bug修复修订相关。第四，api级重构在主要软件发布之前比在发布之后发生得更频繁。这些结果要求我们重新思考重构的真正好处。此外，在本研究中观察到的频繁的牙线重构错误需要新的软件工程工具来支持重构和行为修改编辑的安全应用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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2011 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)

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