Metrics based refactoring

Abstract

Refactoring is one key issue to increase internal software quality during the whole software lifecycle. Since identifying structures where refactorings should be applied often is explained with subjective perceptions like "bad taste" or "bad smell", an automatic refactoring location finder seems difficult. We show that a special kind of metrics can support these subjective perceptions and thus can be used as an effective and efficient way to get support for the decision of where to apply refactoring. Due to the fact that the software developer is the last authority, we provide powerful and metrics based software visualisation to support the developers in judging their products. The authors demonstrate this approach for four typical refactorings and present both a tool supporting the identification and case studies of its application.