Software Refactoring Bot: An Intelligent and Automated Tool for Refactoring Recommendation

Published in: 2019 34th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)

The Revolution of Continuous Refactoring

While the software engineering community has extensively studied root-canal refactoring for fixing system-wide quality issues, continuous refactoring during development has received much less attention—until now.

The Modern Development Challenge

Recent empirical studies reveal a significant shift in how developers approach refactoring:

Real-World Developer Behavior

✅ Developers apply refactoring incrementally during bug fixes
✅ Refactoring happens naturally when adding new features
✅ Continuous integration demands rapid, automated solutions

Current Limitations

❌ Manual refactoring is expensive and time-consuming
❌ Existing automated tools are challenging to configure
❌ Integration disruption costs are significant
❌ DevOps workflows lack refactoring support

Introducing RefBot: The First Intelligent Refactoring Bot

RefBot represents a paradigm shift in software refactoring—the first intelligent bot designed for continuous integration and modern development workflows.

🤖 How RefBot Works

1. Seamless Integration

Platform: Integrated directly into version control systems (GitHub)
Monitoring: Continuously monitors software repositories
Triggers: Activated by "open" or "merge" actions on pull requests

2. Intelligent Analysis

Scope: Analyzes only files changed in the current pull request
Detection: Identifies refactoring opportunities using quality attributes
Optimization: Finds the best sequence of refactorings to fix quality issues

3. Automated Recommendations

Delivery: Generates automatic pull requests with recommendations
Reporting: Provides detailed impact analysis and reports
Control: Developers review, select, and approve desired changes

🔄 The RefBot Workflow

Pull Request Created/Updated
           ↓
    RefBot Analyzes Changes
           ↓
   Quality Issues Detected?
           ↓
  Generate Refactoring Sequence
           ↓
   Create Automated Pull Request
           ↓
   Developer Reviews & Selects
           ↓
    Merge Approved Changes

Key Innovations

🎯 Continuous Integration Focus

First tool designed specifically for CI/CD pipelines
Zero disruption to existing development workflows
Incremental refactoring aligned with developer practices

🔍 Smart Change Analysis

Context-aware: Only analyzes changed files, not entire codebase
Quality-driven: Uses multiple quality attributes for detection
Sequence optimization: Finds optimal refactoring sequences

👥 Developer-Centric Design

Review-based workflow: Developers maintain full control
Detailed reporting: Clear impact analysis for informed decisions
Selective adoption: Choose which recommendations to apply

Tool Demonstration

See RefBot in action with our comprehensive tool demo:

Evaluation & Results

We conducted comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation through surveys with experienced developers on both open source and industry projects.

Key Findings:

✅ High Adoption Rate: Developers found RefBot easy to integrate
✅ Quality Improvements: Measurable code quality enhancements
✅ Workflow Compatibility: Seamless integration with existing processes
✅ Developer Satisfaction: Positive feedback on usability and effectiveness

Industry Impact:

Open Source Projects: Successfully deployed on multiple repositories
Enterprise Adoption: Validated in real industry environments
DevOps Integration: Proven compatibility with modern development practices

Resources

🔗 Publication Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ase2019refbot/

Abstract

The adoption of refactoring techniques for continuous integration received much less attention from the research community comparing to root-canal refactoring to fix the quality issues in the whole system. Several recent empirical studies show that developers, in practice, are applying refactoring incrementally when they are fixing bugs or adding new features. There is an urgent need for refactoring tools that can support continuous integration and some recent development processes such as DevOps that are based on rapid releases. Furthermore, several studies show that manual refactoring is expensive and existing automated refactoring tools are challenging to configure and integrate into the development pipelines with significant disruption cost.

In this paper, we propose, for the first time, an intelligent software refactoring bot, called RefBot. Integrated into the version control system (e.g. GitHub), our bot continuously monitors the software repository, and it is triggered by any "open" or "merge" action on pull requests. The bot analyzes the files changed during that pull request to identify refactoring opportunities using a set of quality attributes then it will find the best sequence of refactorings to fix the quality issues if any. The bot recommends all these refactorings through an automatically generated pull-request. The developer can review the recommendations and their impacts in a detailed report and select the code changes that he wants to keep or ignore. After this review, the developer can close and approve the merge of the bot's pull request. We quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated the performance and effectiveness of RefBot by a survey conducted with experienced developers who used the bot on both open source and industry projects.

Technical Architecture

RefBot's architecture demonstrates several technical innovations:

🏗️ System Components

Repository Monitor

Real-time tracking of pull request activities
Event-driven architecture for immediate response
Scalable monitoring across multiple repositories

Quality Analysis Engine

Multi-metric evaluation using established quality attributes
Change-focused analysis for efficiency
Intelligent prioritization of refactoring opportunities

Refactoring Recommendation System

Sequence optimization algorithms
Impact prediction and conflict resolution
Automated code generation for proposed changes

Integration Layer

GitHub API integration for seamless workflow
Pull request automation for recommendation delivery
Developer interface for review and selection

Impact on Modern Software Development

RefBot addresses critical gaps in contemporary software engineering:

🚀 DevOps Enablement

Rapid release cycles supported by continuous refactoring
Quality gates integrated into CI/CD pipelines
Technical debt management in agile environments

💡 Developer Productivity

Reduced manual effort in identifying refactoring opportunities
Learning opportunities through automated recommendations
Quality awareness during regular development tasks

🔧 Process Innovation

Shift-left quality practices in development lifecycle
Automated code review augmentation
Continuous improvement culture enablement

Future Directions

RefBot opens new research and development opportunities:

🔮 Research Extensions

Machine learning integration for personalized recommendations
Cross-project learning from refactoring patterns
Real-time collaboration features for team development

🏢 Enterprise Applications

Custom quality metrics for domain-specific requirements
Compliance automation for regulatory environments
Scale optimization for large codebases

Significance & Legacy

RefBot represents a fundamental shift toward intelligent, automated software engineering:

First-of-its-kind: Pioneer in continuous refactoring automation
Industry adoption: Proven viability in real-world environments
Research foundation: Basis for future intelligent development tools
Community impact: Advancing the state-of-the-art in automated software engineering

Ready to revolutionize your development workflow? Contact me to learn more about RefBot or explore our other research.