UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		 COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM


	   "Extracting Refactoring Trends from Open-Source Software
                     and a Possible Solution to the 
                    'Related Refactoring' Conundrum"


			 Dr. Steve Counsell
                        Brunel University, UK

		       15 February 2006 (Wednesday)

			  Lecture Theatre E350
		       Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			       3 - 4 pm

	       Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.
			 [Catering Permitting]

		    Everyone is Welcome to Attend
			  [Space Permitting]


Abstract:

Refactoring, as a software engineering discipline has emerged over
recent years to become an important aspect of maintaining software.
Refactoring refers to the restructuring of software according to
specific mechanics and principles. In this talk, I'll describe a tool
that allows refactoring data across multiple versions of seven
open-source software systems to be collected. The tool automates the
identification of refactorings as program transformations between
consecutive software releases. The same tool thus allowed an empirical
analysis of software development across versions from the perspective of
those transformations. I'll describe results for the systems analysed
and point to key conclusions from the analysis. In particular, a
problematic empirical question as to whether certain refactorings are
related, i.e., they cannot be undertaken in isolation without other
refactorings being undertaken in parallel. In this context, I focus
specifically on the four most common refactorings identified by the tool
from three of the open-source systems and use a dependency graph to
inform conclusions about the empirical data extracted by the tool. An
interesting result relating to some common refactorings emerges as a
result.
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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq