A refactoring constraint language and its application to eiffel

  • Authors:
  • Friedrich Steimann;Christian Kollee;Jens von Pilgrim

  • Affiliations:
  • Lehrgebiet Programmiersysteme, Fernuniversität in Hagen, Hagen;Lehrgebiet Programmiersysteme, Fernuniversität in Hagen, Hagen;Lehrgebiet Programmiersysteme, Fernuniversität in Hagen, Hagen

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 25th European conference on Object-oriented programming
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

We generalize previous work on constraint-based refactoring and develop it into the definition of a constraint language allowing the specification of refactorings in a completely declarative way. We present a compiler that transforms specifications in our language to plug-ins for an IDE that, together with an accompanying framework providing the necessary infrastructure, implement the specified refactoring tools. We evaluate our approach by presenting specifications of three different refactorings for the Eiffel programming language, and by applying the resulting refactoring tools to several sample programs. Outcome suggests that our approach is indeed viable.