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| Type | Journal Article |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | A large-scale empirical exploration on refactoring activities in open source software projects |
| Organization Unit | |
| Authors |
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| Item Subtype | Original Work |
| Refereed | Yes |
| Status | Published in final form |
| Language |
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| Journal Title | Science of Computer Programming |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Geographical Reach | international |
| ISSN | 0167-6423 |
| Volume | 180 |
| Page Range | 1 - 15 |
| Date | 2019 |
| Abstract Text | Refactoring is a well-established practice that aims at improving the internal structure of a software system without changing its external behavior. Existing literature provides evidence of how and why developers perform refactoring in practice. In this paper, we continue on this line of research by performing a large-scale empirical analysis of refactoring practices in 200 open source systems. Specifically, we analyze the change history of these systems at commit level to investigate: (i) whether developers perform refactoring operations and, if so, which are more diffused and (ii) when refactoring operations are applied, and (iii) which are the main developer-oriented factors leading to refactoring. Based on our results, future research can focus on enabling automatic support for less frequent refactorings and on recommending refactorings based on the developer's workload, project's maturity and developer's commitment to the project. |
| Free access at | Official URL |
| Related URLs | |
| Digital Object Identifier | 10.1016/j.scico.2019.05.002 |
| Other Identification Number | merlin-id:17822 |
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