A critical analysis of two refactoring tools

Abstract

This study provides a critical analysis of refactoring by surveying the refactoring tools in IDEA and Eclipse. Ways are discussed to locate targets for refactorings, via detection of code smells from static code analysis in IDEA and during the compilation process in Eclipse. New code smells are defined as well as the refactorings needed to remove the code smells. The impacts the code smells have on design are well documented. Considerable effort is made to describe how these code smells and their refactorings can be used to improve design. Practical methods are provided to detect code smells in large projects such as Sun’s JDK. The methodology includes a classification scheme to categorise code smells by their value and complexity to handle large projects more efficiently. Additionally a detailed analysis is performed on the evolution of the JDK from a maintainability point of view. Code smells are used to measure maintainability in this instance.