DOI: 10.18710/vttnxm
title: Replication Data for: A Study of Refactorings During Software Change Tasks

description: &lt;b&gt;Please use "Tree View" to browse the files efficiently.&lt;/b&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
This dataset contains replication artifacts, data, and analysis artifacts for the study "Refactoring strategies used by developers during software evolution tasks". The study was presented in the paper "A Study of Refactorings During Software Change Tasks". 
&lt;p&gt;
The purpose of the study was to learn about how developers approach software change tasks that contain refactoring steps. Developers were recruited and presented with three software change tasks that contain steps that are amenable to automation with refactoring tools. The tasks were based on commits mined from open-source repositories. The developers solved the tasks while following a think aloud protocol. Interleaved with the tasks and just after all the tasks were finished we conducted interviews with the developer. We recorded their vocalizing, the interviews, their screens, and the resulting source code. We then transcribed the audio and annotated the transcripts with timestamps, and invocations of refactoring tools, if any. 
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Article abstract:
Developers frequently undertake software change tasks that could be partially or fully automated by refactoring tools. As has been reported by others, all too often, these refactoring steps are instead performed manually by developers. These missed opportunities are referred to as occasions of disuse of refactoring tools. We perform an observational study in which 17 developers with professional experience attempt to solve three change tasks with steps amenable to the use of refactoring tools. We found that the strategies developers use to approach these tasks shape their workflow, which in turn shapes the opportunities for refactoring tool use. We report on a number of findings about developer strategies, demonstrating the difficulty of aligning the kind of refactoring steps that emerge during a change task based on the strategy with the tools available. We also report on findings about refactoring tools, such as the difficulties developers face in controlling the scope of application of the tools. Our findings can help inform the designers of refactoring tools.
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Data description: 
This dataset contains the transcript data that was collected during the experiments. It also contains the screen recordings of the participants' screen that was collected during the experiment. It is also contains the source code that the participants' edits resulted in. It also contains the results of coding the transcripts and the videos with invocations of refactoring tools (also visible on the screen recording) and mentions of refactoring tools. It also contains the workflows that we created for each participant which contains a summary of all refactoring tool invocations (also visible in transcripts) and their overarching strategy.
&lt;p&gt;
Participants worked in IntelliJ (Java IDE, integrated development environment).&lt;p&gt;
Their screen and audio was recorded with QuickTime Player.&lt;p&gt;
The source code was in Java 1.8.&lt;p&gt;
The code had a git repository.&lt;p&gt;
The project was built with Maven.&lt;p&gt;
The Maven build file contains maven-compiler-plugin, org.hamcrest.hamcrest-core, org.junit.junit5-api, org.junit.junit4-engine.&lt;p&gt;
The audio was transcribed with the Atom Editor.&lt;p&gt; 
The CSV-files were created with Google Sheets.
description: IntelliJ CE, 2017
description: QuickTime Player, 7
description: Java, 1.8
description: git, 2017
description: Maven, 4.0.0
description: maven-compiler-plugin, 3.8.0
description: org.hamcrest.hamcrest-core, 1.3
description: org.junit.junit5-api, 5.0.0-ALPHA
description: Participants worked in IntelliJ. Their screen and audio was recorded with QuickTime Player. The source code was in Java 1.8. The code had a git repository. The project was built with Maven. The Maven build file contains maven-compiler-plugin, org.hamcrest.hamcrest-core, org.junit.junit5-api, org.junit.junit4-engine. The audio was transcribed with the Atom Editor. The CSV-files were created with Google Sheets., 5.0.0-ALPHA
description: Atom Editor, 1.53.0 x64
description: Google Sheets, 2019