TOAD: A Tool for Recommending Auto-Refactoring Alternatives

Abstract

Developers often face usability problems when trying to adopt refactoring tools. We replicate a user study to identify and categorize these problems, and we propose a tool that guides the developer to select the correct piece of code for Extract Method refactoring. Our tool works during the workflow of refactoring activities and selects candidate selections that (i) are syntactically correct and (ii) meet the necessary preconditions for Extract Method.