Automated Testing of Refactoring Engines

Daniel, Brett; Dig, Danny; Garcia, Kely; Marinov, Darko

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/11304 Copy

Description

Title

Automated Testing of Refactoring Engines

Author(s)

• Daniel, Brett
• Dig, Danny
• Garcia, Kely
• Marinov, Darko

Issue Date

2007-03

Keyword(s)

computer science

Abstract

Refactorings are behavior-preserving program transformations that improve the design of a program. Refactoring engines are tools that automate the application of refactorings: first the user chooses a refactoring to apply, then the engine checks if the change is safe, and if so, transforms the program. Refactoring engines are a key component of modern IDEs, and programmers rely on them to perform refactorings. A fault in the refactoring engine can have severe consequences as it can erroneously change large bodies of source code and lead to strenuous debugging sessions. We present a technique for automated testing of refactoring engines. Test inputs for refactoring engines are programs. The core of our technique is a framework for iterative generation of structurally complex test inputs. We instantiate the framework to generate abstract syntax trees that represent Java programs. We also create several kinds of oracles to automatically check that the refactoring engine transformed the generated program correctly. We have applied our technique to testing Eclipse and NetBeans, two popular open-source IDEs for Java, and we have exposed new faults in both: 9 faults in Eclipse and 10 faults in NetBeans.

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/11304

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