Statistical Analysis of Refactoring Bug Reports in Eclipse Bugzilla

Abstract

Eclipse Java Development Tool (JDT) is one of the most popular Java Integrated Development Environments which offers frequently used refactorings including rename, move and extract. However, JDT refactorings are flawed by a number of known bugs. We discovered that 5,045 bugs related to JDT refactorings have been reported on Eclipse's bug report website (Eclipse Bugzilla) as of January 2021. Many of these bugs are fixed after being reported, but others remain unfixed or even forgotten. Our analysis of submitted refactoring bugs shows that 18.4% will not be fixed. We also found that a refactoring bug takes 674 days on average to receive its final resolution. This paper explains the results and findings of our statistical analysis of JDT refactoring bugs in Eclipse Bugzilla.