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Software development agents such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor Agent, Devin, and OpenAI Codex are being increasingly integrated into developer workflows. While prior work has evaluated agent capabilities for code completion and…
Docker allows for the packaging of applications and dependencies, and its instructions are described in Dockerfiles. Nowadays, version pinning is recommended to avoid unexpected changes in the latest version of a package. However, version…
In this paper, we present a tertiary systematic literature review of previous surveys, secondary systematic literature reviews, and systematic mappings. We identify the main observations (what we know) and challenges (what we do not know)…
Large language models (LLMs) for code editing have achieved remarkable progress, yet recent empirical studies reveal a fundamental disconnect between technical accuracy and developer productivity. Despite their strong benchmark performance,…
We aim to explore how developers document their refactoring activities during the software life cycle. We call such activity Self-Affirmed Refactoring (SAR), which indicates developers' documentation of their refactoring activities. SAR is…
Context : Software comprehension and maintenance activities, such as refactoring, are said to be negatively impacted by software complexity. The methods used to measure software product and processes complexity have been thoroughly debated…
Software Quality is a major concern in software engineering development in order to be competitive. Such a quality can be achieved by a possible technique called Refactoring where the systems external behavior of the system is not changed.…
Maintainable and general software allows developers to build robust applications efficiently, yet achieving these qualities often requires refactoring specialized solutions into reusable components. This challenge becomes particularly…
Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure. Not only researchers, but also practitioners, need to know about past…
Refactoring is the practice of improving software quality without altering its external behavior. Developers intuitively refactor their code for multiple purposes, such as improving program comprehension, reducing code complexity, dealing…
Context: Modern code review is a widely employed technique in both industrial and open-source projects, serving to enhance software quality, share knowledge, and ensure compliance with coding standards and guidelines. While code review is…
Many software systems originate as prototypes or minimum viable products (MVPs), developed with an emphasis on delivery speed and responsiveness to changing requirements rather than long-term code maintainability. While effective for rapid…
Automated batch refactoring has become a de-facto mechanism to restructure software that may have significant design flaws negatively impacting the code quality and maintainability. Although automated batch refactoring techniques are known…
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…
Foundation models, such as large language models (LLMs), have the potential to streamline evaluation workflows and improve their performance. However, practical adoption faces challenges, such as customisability, accuracy, and scalability.…
Context. Code refactoring improves software quality without changing external behavior. Despite its advantages, its benefits are hindered by the considerable cost of time, resources, and continuous effort it demands. Aim. Understanding why…
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for automated code refactoring tasks. Although these models can quickly refactor code, the quality may exhibit inconsistencies and unpredictable behavior. In this article, we systematically…
As computational work becomes more and more integral to many aspects of scientific research, computational reproducibility has become an issue of increasing importance to computer systems researchers and domain scientists alike. Though…
With the growing use of DevOps tools and frameworks, there is an increased need for tools and techniques that support more than code. The current state-of-the-art in static developer assistance for tools like Docker is limited to shallow…
In collaborative software development, multiple contributors frequently change the source code in parallel to implement new features, fix bugs, refactor existing code, and make other changes. These simultaneous changes need to be merged…