A toolkit for constructing refactoring engines

Abstract

Many refactorings are simple but tedious, which makes them good candidates for automation. Common refactorings include renaming identifiers, moving code between classes or functions, and encapsulating variables. Most integrated development environments (IDEs) – including Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, Microsoft Visual Studio, and Apple Xcode – provide support for automated refactoring. These features allow the programmer to select a portion of the source code and select a particular refactoring to apply. The IDE then performs a static analysis of the source code, determining whether the desired change will change its behavior. If the behavior will not change, the IDE modifies the source code, showing the user a side-by-side, before-andafter view of the source code so that he can visually inspect the changes