Quality-Aware Refactoring for Early Detection and Resolution of Energy Deficiencies

Software development processes usually target requirements regarding particular qualities in late iteration phases. The developed system is optimised in terms of quality issues, such as, e.g., energy efficiency, without altering the software´s behaviour. Bad structures in terms of specific qualities can be considered as bad smells and refactorings can be used to resolve them to preserve its semantics. The problem is that no explicit relationship between smells, qualities and refactorings exists. Without such a relation it is not possible to give evidence about which quality requirements are not satisfied by detected smells. It cannot be specified which smells are resolved by particular refactorings. Thus, developers are not supported in focusing specific qualities and cannot detect and resolve badly structured code in combination. In this paper we present an approach for correlating smells, qualities and refactorings explicitly which supports to focus on specific qualities in early development phases already. We introduce the new term quality smell and come up with a metamodel and architecture enabling developers to establish such relations. A small evaluation regarding energy efficiency in Java code and discussion completes this paper.