Code Smell Research: History and Future Directions Nikolaos Tsantalis Computer Science & Software Engineering Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 1 Changes aiming to improve the future maintainability and reliability of the software system. Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 2 3 • Refactoring Object-oriented Frameworks, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Introduced the concept of refactorings as behaviorpreserving program restructuring operations. – Introduced the concept of preconditions as conditions that should be examined to determine whether a refactoring can be applied safely. Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 4 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 5 Duplicated Code: “If you see the same code structure in more than one place, … find a way to unify them.” Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 6 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 7 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 8 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 9 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 10 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 11 Code smell definition for Inappropriate Interface inappropriateInterface(?class,?interface,?subclasses) :findall(<?itf,?scs>, commonSubclassInterface(?class,?itf,?scs), ?result), removeDuplicates(?result,?nodups), member(<?interface,?subclasses>,?nodups) Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 12 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 13 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 14 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 15 • Treat the improvement of object-oriented design as a search problem in the space of alternative designs • The move in the search space is achieved by modeling refactorings (inheritance-related) • Apply search algorithms using QMOOD as the fitness function (rank alternative designs) • The outcome is a sequence of refactorings leading to the optimal design Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 16 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 17 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 18 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 19 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 20 Many code smell definitions are based on historical change information – Shotgun Surgery: When every time you make a kind of change, you have to make a lot of little changes to a lot of different classes. – Parallel Inheritance Hierarchies: When every time you make a subclass of one class, you also have to make a subclass of another. Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 21 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 22 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 23 • 12 code smells • 6 Professional developers were hired to implement change requests • 4 medium-sized Java systems with known code smells • 4 weeks of development • Daily interviews and think-aloud sessions Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 24 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 25 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 26 Advantages: Feasible and behavior preserving solutions to design problems Ranking and prioritizing solutions based on their expected effect on design quality A holistic approach for preventive maintenance Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 27 1. Identify places where software should be refactored (known as bad smells). 2. Determine which refactoring(s) should be applied to the identified places. 3. Guarantee that the applied refactoring preserves behavior. 4. Apply the refactoring. 5. Assess the effect of the refactoring on quality characteristics of the software. 6. Maintain the consistency between the refactored code and other software artifacts. Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 28 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 29 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 30 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 31 Context State state - state int type ::int - STATE_A : int = 1 - STATE_B : int = 2 + method() { state.method(); if state == STATE_A } doStateA(); else if state == STATE_B doStateB(); } +method() StateA StateB +method() { +method() { } } Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 32 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 33 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 34 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 35 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 36 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 37 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 38 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 39 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 40 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 41 Since the beginning of 2011 … Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 42 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 43 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 44 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 45 • “Debt” is the effect of incomplete, immature, or inadequate maintenance activities • Delayed tasks may bring a short-term benefit (higher productivity, shorter release time) • Might have to be paid back in the future with “Interest” (increased effort) • “Principal” is the effort to pay off the debt Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 46 • • • • Tracking clones as project evolves Verifying the consistent modification of clones Updating clones and groups as project evolves Assessing the harmfulness of clones Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 47 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 48 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 49 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 50 • So far, we used – Static source code analysis – Semantic analysis – Change history analysis Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 51 Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 52 Every code smell involves a certain risk for future maintainability Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 53 • Likelihood of occurrence of the risky event • Exposure of the system to the event • Consequence of the event Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 54 • Risky events changes driven by code smells – Ex. 1: Fixing the same bug in a clone group – Ex. 2: Making a method more “envy” to another class • Intuition: code that changes frequently due to a design flaw imposes a high risk to the maintainability of a system • Likelihood proneness to code smell driven changes (estimated from the history of changes) Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 55 • Intuition: the more extensively a module is used, the more extensive the propagation of code smell driven changes to dependent modules • Exposure the number and strength of incoming dependencies (estimated from static and dynamic analysis) Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 56 • Consequence cost of code smell driven changes (effort, time, money). From the opposite perspective: • Consequence effect of removing the code smell. • Estimated by computing the impact of the corresponding refactoring on metrics. Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 57 Given a set of different types of refactoring opportunities in a software system • Conflicts • Dependencies Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 58 Visit our project at Second PLOW Installment - March 5, 2014 59