Software systems undergo modifications, improvements
and enhancements to cope with evolving requirements. This
maintenance can cause their quality to decrease. Various
metrics can be used to evaluate the way the quality is affected.
Refactoring is one of the most important and commonly
used techniques of transforming a piece of software
in order to improve its quality. However, although it would
be expected that the increase in quality achieved via refactoring
is reflected in the various metrics, measurements on
real life systems indicate the opposite. We analyzed source
code version control system logs of popular open source
software systems to detect changes marked as refactorings
and examine how the software metrics are affected by this
process, in order to evaluate whether refactoring is effectively
used as a means to improve software quality within
the open source community.
%0 Conference Paper
%1 Stroggylos
%A Stroggylos, Konstantinos
%A Spinellis, Diomidis
%B WoSQ '07: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Software Quality
%C Washington, DC, USA
%D 2007
%I IEEE Computer Society
%K programming refactoring software_quality style
%P 10
%R http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/WOSQ.2007.11
%T Refactoring--Does It Improve Software Quality?
%X Software systems undergo modifications, improvements
and enhancements to cope with evolving requirements. This
maintenance can cause their quality to decrease. Various
metrics can be used to evaluate the way the quality is affected.
Refactoring is one of the most important and commonly
used techniques of transforming a piece of software
in order to improve its quality. However, although it would
be expected that the increase in quality achieved via refactoring
is reflected in the various metrics, measurements on
real life systems indicate the opposite. We analyzed source
code version control system logs of popular open source
software systems to detect changes marked as refactorings
and examine how the software metrics are affected by this
process, in order to evaluate whether refactoring is effectively
used as a means to improve software quality within
the open source community.
%@ 0-7695-2959-3
@inproceedings{Stroggylos,
abstract = {Software systems undergo modifications, improvements
and enhancements to cope with evolving requirements. This
maintenance can cause their quality to decrease. Various
metrics can be used to evaluate the way the quality is affected.
Refactoring is one of the most important and commonly
used techniques of transforming a piece of software
in order to improve its quality. However, although it would
be expected that the increase in quality achieved via refactoring
is reflected in the various metrics, measurements on
real life systems indicate the opposite. We analyzed source
code version control system logs of popular open source
software systems to detect changes marked as refactorings
and examine how the software metrics are affected by this
process, in order to evaluate whether refactoring is effectively
used as a means to improve software quality within
the open source community.},
added-at = {2008-10-11T14:59:58.000+0200},
address = {Washington, DC, USA},
author = {Stroggylos, Konstantinos and Spinellis, Diomidis},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2b216b4d2720e281e42f1bf2b079e9f2d/sjbutler},
booktitle = {WoSQ '07: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Software Quality},
doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/WOSQ.2007.11},
interhash = {92755c8ed35b9987c5b20708653289d2},
intrahash = {b216b4d2720e281e42f1bf2b079e9f2d},
isbn = {0-7695-2959-3},
keywords = {programming refactoring software_quality style},
pages = 10,
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
timestamp = {2008-10-11T14:59:58.000+0200},
title = {Refactoring--Does It Improve Software Quality?},
year = 2007
}