research-article

Sound and extensible renaming for java

Authors:

Torbjörn Ekman,

Oege de MoorAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '08: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems languages and applications

Pages 277 - 294

https://doi.org/10.1145/1449764.1449787

Published: 19 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Descriptive names are crucial to understand code. However, good names are notoriously hard to choose and manually changing a globally visible name can be a maintenance nightmare. Hence, tool support for automated renaming is an essential aid for developers and widely supported by popular development environments.

This work improves on two limitations in current refactoring tools: too weak preconditions that lead to unsoundness where names do not bind to the correct declarations after renaming, and too strong preconditions that prevent renaming of certain programs. We identify two main reasons for unsoundness: complex name lookup rules make it hard to define sufficient preconditions, and new language features require additional preconditions. We alleviate both problems by presenting a novel extensible technique for creating symbolic names that are guaranteed to bind to a desired entity in a particular context by inverting lookup functions. The inverted lookup functions can then be tailored to create qualified names where otherwise a conflict would occur, allowing the refactoring to proceed and improve on the problem with too strong preconditions.

We have implemented renaming for Java as an extension to the JastAdd Extensible Java Compiler and integrated it in Eclipse. We show examples for which other refactoring engines have too weak preconditions, as well as examples where our approach succeeds in renaming entities by inserting qualifications. To validate the extensibility of the approach we have implemented renaming support for Java 5 and AspectJ like inter-type declarations as modular extensions to the initial Java 1.4 refactoring engine. The renaming engine is only a few thousand lines of code including extensions and performance is on par with industrial strength refactoring tools.

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616261
Wu JClause J(2023)Automated Identification of Uniqueness in JUnit TestsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/353331332:1(1-32)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533313
Ju YTang YLan JMi XZhang J(2023)A Cross-Language Name Binding Recognition and Discrimination Approach for Identifiers2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00115(948-955)Online publication date: Mar-2023
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Index Terms

Sound and extensible renaming for java
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '08: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems languages and applications

October 2008

654 pages

ISBN:9781605582153

DOI:10.1145/1449764

General Chair:
Gail E. Harris
Instantiated Software Inc.
,
Program Chairs:
Gregor Kiczales
University of British Columbia
,
Dirk Riehle
SAP Research
,
Andrew P. Black
Portland State University

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 43, Issue 10
September 2008
613 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1449955
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 October 2008

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OOPSLA08: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications

October 19 - 23, 2008

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Cited By

Chi XLiu HLi GWang WXia YJiang YZhang YJi WChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)An Automated Approach to Extracting Local VariablesProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616261(313-325)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616261
Wu JClause J(2023)Automated Identification of Uniqueness in JUnit TestsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/353331332:1(1-32)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533313
Ju YTang YLan JMi XZhang J(2023)A Cross-Language Name Binding Recognition and Discrimination Approach for Identifiers2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00115(948-955)Online publication date: Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00115
Pelsmaeker Dvan Antwerpen HPoulsen CVisser E(2022)Language-parametric static semantic code completionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35273296:OOPSLA1(1-30)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3527329
AlOmar EMkaouer MNewman COuni A(2022)On preserving the behavior in software refactoringInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106675140:COnline publication date: 22-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106675
Eilertsen A(2020)Predictable, Flexible or CorrectProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops10.1145/3387940.3392185(330-333)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387940.3392185
Li GLiu HNyamawe A(2020)A Survey on Renamings of Software EntitiesACM Computing Surveys10.1145/337944353:2(1-38)Online publication date: 17-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3379443
Eilertsen ARothermel GBae D(2020)Refactoring operations Grounded in manual code changesProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings10.1145/3377812.3381395(182-185)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
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Rowe RFérée HThompson SOwens SMcKinley KFisher K(2019)Characterising renaming within OCaml’s module system: theory and implementationProceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3314221.3314600(950-965)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2019
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Steimann F(2018)Constraint-Based RefactoringACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/315601640:1(1-40)Online publication date: 3-Jan-2018
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