Demo of Software Refactoring

with Eclipse
Giriprasad Sridhara
CISC 879 Spring 2007
May 15 2007
 Road Map
• Demo with Eclipse
• Demo with Visual Studio (if time permits)
• Eclipse plug-in to
– Do your own refactoring (if time permits)
• Examples of refactorings
– In real world code
• Apache Struts
• Free open-source framework
– for creating Java web applications
 Road Map
• Eclipse vs IDEA - Comparison
– NOT an IDE comparison!
– BUT a Comparison of the refactoring support
– Like, Eclipse supports Refactoring A, but not
IDEA
– Refactoring B has a bug in Eclipse but not in
IDEA
– So on…
 Refactoring tool
• Why have a refactoring tool (?)
• Is a refactoring tool redundant
– If we have good unit test suite (?)
– i.e. We can easily check behaviour preservation
– NO!
• Refactoring by hand
– Tedious
– Error Prone
– Time consuming
• Without a tool
– Developers may NOT refactor!
 Job done by refactoring tool
• Extract Method Refactoring (manual versus by tool)
– Remember Extract Method ?
• A tool does the following:
– Checks the selected code is legal to extract
– Computes number of parameters to the method
– Computes the required return value and type from the method
– Allows to specify
• Name of the method
• Order of parameter passing
– Extracts the code into the new method
– Creates the new method in the original class.
• Compare with doing manually
– Show In Eclipse (group2.ExtractMethod_etal::CnvrtTemp)
 Technical Requirements for a
Refactoring Tool
• Program database
– A searchable repository
– For example,
• For Rename Method, what do we need?
• We need to find all calls to the method
– Lexical searches (grep)
• Won’t work!
• Can’t distiniguish between
– a name like “temperature” which can be
» A method
» A variable
» In the program comments
 Technical Requirements of a
Refactoring tool
• Parse Trees (AST)
– Refactorings use this
– Manipulate this
– For Rename Method
• Rewrite the AST
– Change the MethodDeclaration node name
– Change all the MethodInvocation node names which
referred to the old name

• Accuracy
– The refactored code should be accurate
– i.e. preserve behaviour
 Practical Requirements for a
Refactoring Tool
• Speed
– If the refactoring tool is slow (?)
– Developer may not refactor at all!
– OR may do it by hand with all its associated
problems
• Undo a refactoring
– Without this (?)
– We have to use an old version to revert
• Available within the IDE
 Eclipse Refactoring support
• Mainly Java support via the JDT
• Very poor support for C++ from the CDT
– Only Rename refactoring!
– This is supposed to improve
– With the new CDT 4.0 release.
• The Java refactoring
– Available from Main menu
– Context (right-click) menu
– Undo/redo refactoring
• Merged with Edit->Undo/Redo Menu
• This is bad!
• Why?
• We have to navigate past edit actions performed after a
refactoring
 Eclipse Refactorings
• General work flow
• Choose a refactoring from main/context menu
• If not applicable
– For right click
• it is disabled
– For main menu
• A dialog saying not applicable shows up
• Informs what has to be selected for applicability
• Example, For Rename refactoring
• Must select Method, Variable, Class
• Show in eclipse
 Eclipse Refactorings
• If applicable
– Additional dialog for parameters
– For Rename method,
– Ask for new method name
• Show preview of the refactored code
– Shows potential problems
– For Rename Method (?)
– If there is a name conflict
• A method with the new name and same signature exists in
the hierarchy, already
• Once user accepts the changes,
– do the changes.
 Eclipse Refactorings
• If there were problems shown in the
preview
– BUT, the user ignored them (?)
– The refactored code will also have the same
problems
– i.e. it will not compile.
 Eclipse Refactoring Menu
Organization
• Divided into 7 groups
• Group 1
– Name and physical organization
– Rename and Move
• Group 2
– Methods
– Extract Method, Change Signature, Inline,
Extract Constant, Extract Local variable.
 Eclipse Refactoring Menu
Organization
• Group 3
– Within class
– Nested, anonymous classes.
• Group 4
– Inheritance hierarchy
– Pull up, Push down
• Group 5
– Miscellaneous
– Indirection, Factory
 Eclipse Refactoring Menu
Organization
• Group 6
– Generics
• Group 7
– Scripts and Refactoring History
– History Shows
– Date and time of refactorings
– The actual refactorings
• Method Cnvrt was renamed to Convert
• Additional choices made by the developer
– Like, Update the name even in program comments.
 Eclipse Refactoring Menu
Organization
• Record refactorings (Create Script)
• Playback refactorings (Apply Script)
• Where would this be helpful (?)
– Library developer can do refactorings of APIs
– Create script of these refactorings.
– He can then distribute it to Library users
– Library user can avoid manual updates to
sync with the library API change
– But playback the refactorings from the script
 Microsoft Visual Studio
refactorings
• No direct support in .Net 2003 version
– Believe there is support in VS 2005,
– But I don’t have access to it.
– 90 day trial version available.
• So used an external trial product
– Resharper (JetBrains)
– Same company that produced IntelliJ IDEA
• Resharper
– Add on to Visual Studio
– Similar support like Eclipse (Main and context menu)
– Supports only C# langauge
 Eclipse plug-in to do your own
refactoring
• http://www-
128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/
library/os-ecjdt/
 Real world refactorings

• Struts
– Examples of Refactorings
– Between version 1.1 and 1.2
• Rename Method
• Pull Up Method
• Change Method Signature
• Move Method
– Detection mechanism
• Refactoring Crawler (Dig et al UIUC)
• https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dig/RefactoringCrawler/
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• A quick comparison of the refactoring support
offered by
– Eclipse
– IntelliJ IDEA
• Basic Facts
– Eclipse
• Open source (IBM)
• Customizable to different languages like Java, C++
– IntelliJ IDEA
• Commercial (JetBrains http://www.jetbrains.com/idea )
• Java IDE
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• IntelliJ IDEA Pricing
– Commercial - $499
– Personal - $249
– Academic - $99
– Classroom – Free!
– Open Source – Free!
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• IDEA does not appear to have
– Ability to create and apply
• refactoring scripts
– Does not show history of refactorings clearly
– It has “migrate” refactorings
• But this is for packages and classes
• Also the procedure described appears very tedious
• http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2006/08/switching-
between-api
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• IDEA’s Rename Method refactoring is
smarter!
– Renames Method even in Java Reflection API
call
– i.e.
– Class::getMethod(“oldName”…)
– will be replaced with
– Class::getMethod(“newName”…)
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• Eclipse’s generify refactoring is better
– In my example, group6.InferGenericTypeArg
– It inferred generic type for List and Iterator
– IDEA did only for Iterator
– This is bad!
• The List is the type that must be type safe
• Introduce Parameter
– Eclipse has a bug!!
– IDEA does not have it!
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• IDEA supports an important refactoring
– Replace Inheritance with delegation
– This refactoring allows to remedy
• Violations of the Liskov Substitution Principle
– Eclipse does not support this.
• IDEA supports
– Replace Temp With Query
– Eclipse does not.
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• Extract Method – Duplicated Code
– Suppose we do Extract Method
– And the same piece of code is
• Duplicated at other places
– IDEA detects this
• Replaces the clones as well,
• With the extracted method call!
– Officially, Eclipse
• is supposed to recognize this
• and handle it,
• but it does not work always!
 Eclipse vs Intellij IDEA
• IDEA supports Invert Boolean refactoring
– Eclipse does not
– But this is a minor refactoring
• Preview of refactored code
– IDEA and Eclipse show preview
– But Eclipse’s preview is better
– It shows both the current code and new refactored code
juxtaposed for comparison
– IDEA does not present such a preview
• So it is hard to visualize the changes.
• For many refactorings like ExtractMethod
• IDEA does not present previews at all.
 Sources of the presentation
• Refactoring – Martin Fowler
• Wikipedia
• Eclipse online documentation
• IBM Eclipse
Questions?

Thank you.