A visualization method of program dependency graph for identifying extract method opportunity

Abstract

Refactoring is important for efficient software maintenance. However, tools supports are highly required for refactoring because manual operations of refactoring are troublesome and error prone. This paper proposes a technique that suggests Extract Method candidates automatically. Extract Method refactoring is to create a new method from a code fragment in an existing method. Previous research efforts showed that the Extract Method refactoring is often performed prior to other refactorings, so that it is important to support Extract Method refactoring. Previous studies have proposed methods that suggest Extract Method candidates based on linage or complexity. However it is originally desirable to divide methods based on their functionalities. This paper uses the strength of data connection between sentences in the source code. We deem that strongly-connected data expresses a single function. This paper proposes a technique that suggests Extract Method candidates based on strongly-connected data.