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With the growth of the open-source data science community, both the number of data science libraries and the number of versions for the same library are increasing rapidly. To match the evolving APIs from those libraries, open-source…

Architectural smells such as God Class, Cyclic Dependency, and Hub-like Dependency degrade software quality and maintainability. Existing tools detect such smells but rarely suggest how to fix them. This paper explores the use of…

Refactoring is a common software engineering practice that improves code quality without altering program behavior. Although tools like ReExtractor+, RefactoringMiner, and RefDiff have been developed to detect refactorings automatically,…

Code refactoring is a fundamental software engineering practice aimed at improving code quality and maintainability. Despite its importance, developers often neglect refactoring due to the significant time, effort, and resources it…

One single code change can significantly influence a wide range of software systems and their users. For example, 1) adding a new feature can spread defects in several modules, while 2) changing an API method can improve the performance of…

Refactoring is a critical process in software development, aiming at improving the internal structure of code while preserving its external behavior. Refactoring engines are integral components of modern Integrated Development Environments…

Developers often opt for easier but non-optimal implementation to meet deadlines or create rapid prototypes, leading to additional effort known as technical debt to improve the code later. Oftentimes, developers explicitly document the…

Code smell is a great challenge in software refactoring, which indicates latent design or implementation flaws that may degrade the software maintainability and evolution. Over the past of decades, the research on code smell has received…

Automated source code refactoring, particularly extract method refactoring, is a crucial and frequently employed technique during software development. Despite its importance and frequent use by practitioners, current automated techniques…

A key issue in collaborative software development is communication among developers. One modality of communication is a commit message, in which developers describe the changes they make in a repository. As such, commit messages serve as an…

The ever-growing popularity of mobile phones has brought additional challenges to the software development lifecycle. Mobile applications (apps, for short) ought to provide the same set of features as conventional software, with limited…

Identifiers, such as method and variable names, form a large portion of source code. Therefore, low-quality identifiers can substantially hinder code comprehension. To support developers in using meaningful identifiers, several…

With the rapid development of deep learning, the implementation of intricate algorithms and substantial data processing have become standard elements of deep learning projects. As a result, the code has become progressively complex as the…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown potential to enhance software development through automated code generation and refactoring, reducing development time and improving code quality. This study empirically evaluates StarCoder2, an LLM…

Commit messages record code changes (e.g., feature modifications and bug repairs) in natural language, and are useful for program comprehension. Due to the frequent updates of software and time cost, developers are generally unmotivated to…

Programming languages and platforms improve over time, sometimes resulting in new language features that offer many benefits. However, despite these benefits, developers may not always be willing to adopt them in their projects for various…

Commit messages are natural language descriptions of code changes, which are important for program understanding and maintenance. However, writing commit messages manually is time-consuming and laborious, especially when the code is updated…

Inspection of code changes is a time-consuming task that constitutes a big part of everyday work of software engineers. Existing IDEs provide little information about the semantics of code changes within the file editor view. Therefore…

An essential part of software maintenance and evolution, refactoring is performed by developers, regardless of technology or domain, to improve the internal quality of the system, and reduce its technical debt. However, choosing the…

Modern code review is a widely used technique employed in both industrial and open-source projects to improve software quality, share knowledge, and ensure adherence to coding standards and guidelines. During code review, developers may…