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Refactoring aims at improving the maintainability of source code without modifying its external behavior. Previous works proposed approaches to recommend refactoring solutions to software developers. The generation of the recommended solutions is guided by metrics acting as proxy for maintainability (e.g., number of code smells removed by the recommended solution). These approaches ignore the impact of the recommended refactorings on other non-functional requirements, such as performance, energy consumption, and so forth. Little is known about the impact of refactoring operations on non-functional requirements other than maintainability. We aim to fill this gap by presenting the largest study to date to investigate the impact of refactoring on software performance, in terms of execution time. We mined the change history of 20 systems that defined performance benchmarks in their repositories, with the goal of identifying commits in which developers implemented refactoring operations impacting code components that are exercised by the performance benchmarks. Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis, we show that refactoring operations can significantly impact the execution time. Indeed, none of the investigated refactoring types can be considered “safe” in ensuring no performance regression. Refactoring types aimed at decomposing complex code entities (e.g., Extract Class/Interface, Extract Method) have higher chances of triggering performance degradation, suggesting their careful consideration when refactoring performance-critical code.

Thu 13 Oct

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16:00 - 18:00
Technical Session 31 - Code Similarities and RefactoringResearch Papers / Tool Demonstrations / Journal-first Papers at Banquet A
Chair(s): Hua Ming Oakland University
16:00
20m
Research paper
Reformulator: Automated Refactoring of the N+1 Problem in Database-Backed Applications
Research Papers
Alexi Turcotte Northeastern University, Mark W. Aldrich Tufts University, Frank Tip Northeastern University
16:20
20m
Paper
How Software Refactoring Impacts Execution Time
Journal-first Papers
Luca Traini University of L'Aquila, Daniele Di Pompeo University of L'Aquila, Michele Tucci Charles University, Bin Lin Radboud University, Simone Scalabrino University of Molise, Gabriele Bavota Software Institute, USI Università della Svizzera italiana, Michele Lanza Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Rocco Oliveto University of Molise, Vittorio Cortellessa University of L'Aquila
Link to publication DOI Authorizer link
16:40
20m
Research paper
Learning to Synthesize Relational Invariants
Research Papers
Jingbo Wang University of Southern California, Chao Wang USC
17:00
10m
Demonstration
AntiCopyPaster: Extracting Code Duplicates As Soon As They Are Introduced in the IDE
Tool Demonstrations
Eman Abdullah AlOmar Stevens Institute of Technology, Anton Ivanov HSE University, Zarina Kurbatova JetBrains Research, Yaroslav Golubev JetBrains Research, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer Rochester Institute of Technology, Ali Ouni ETS Montreal, University of Quebec, Timofey Bryksin JetBrains Research, Le Nguyen Rochester Institute of Technology, Amit Kini Rochester Institute of Technology, Aditya Thakur Rochester Institute of Technology
DOI Pre-print
17:10
20m
Research paper
TreeCen: Building Tree Graph for Scalable Semantic Code Clone DetectionVirtual
Research Papers
Yutao Hu Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Deqing Zou Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Junru Peng Xidian University, Yueming Wu Nanyang Technological University, Junjie Shan KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Hai Jin Huazhong University of Science and Technology
17:30
10m
Demonstration
Trimmer: Context-Specific Code ReductionVirtual
Tool Demonstrations
Aatira Anum Ahmad Lahore University of Management Sciences, Mubashir Anwar University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Hashim Sharif University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ashish Gehani SRI, Fareed Zaffar Lahore University of Management Sciences
17:40
20m
Research paper
Studying and Understanding the Tradeoffs Between Generality and Reduction in Software DebloatingVirtual
Research Papers
Qi Xin Wuhan University, Qirun Zhang Georgia Institute of Technology, Alessandro Orso Georgia Tech