Proactive Clone Recommendation System for Extract Method Refactoring

Abstract

Extract Method refactoring is commonly used for merging code clones into a single new method. In this position paper, we propose a proactive clone recommendation system for "Extract Method" refactoring. The proposed system that has been implemented as Eclipse plug-in monitors code modifications on the fly. Once the proposed system detects an "Extract Method" refactoring instance based on the analysis of code modifications, it recommends code clones of the refactored code as refactoring candidates. The preliminary user study shows that the users are able to refactor a greater number of clones in less time compared to a code clone analysis environment GemX.