Code Analysis Tool to Detect Extract Class Refactoring Activity in Vb.Net Classes

Abstract

Code changes due to software change requests and bug fixing are inevitable in software lifecycle. The code modification may slowly deviate the code structure from its original structure that leads to unreadable code. Even though the code structure does not affect the software behaviour, it affects the code understandability and maintainability of software. Code refactoring is typically conducted to enhance the code structure; however, this task needs a lot of developers’ effort. Thus, this paper aims at developing a tool that will help programmers identify possible code refactoring.Weconsider two aspects of refactoring:(i) refactoring activities, and (ii) refactoring prediction model. In terms of refactoring activity, we focus on Extract Class. The object-oriented metrics are used to predict the possibility of code refactoring. The combination of two refactoring aspects recommends the possible refactoring effort and identify classes that are involved. As a result, we managed to get 79% percent of accuracy based on the 11 correct results out of 14 that the tool correctly detected. On top of supporting programmers in improving codes, this work also may give more insight into how refactoring improvessystems.