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When done manually, refactoring legacy code in order to eliminate uses of deprecated APIs is an error-prone and time-consuming process. In this paper, we investigate to which degree refactorings for deprecated Java APIs can be automated, and quantify the benefit of Javadoc code hints for this task. To this end, we build a symbolic and a neural engine for the automatic refactoring of deprecated APIs. The former is based on type-directed and component-based program synthesis, whereas the latter uses LLMs. We applied our engines to refactor the deprecated methods in the Oracle JDK 15. Our experiments show that code hints are enabling for the automation of this task: even the worst engine correctly refactors 71% of the tasks with code hints, which drops to at best 14% on tasks without. Adding more code hints to Javadoc can hence boost the refactoring of code that uses deprecated APIs.

Details

1009240
Subject
Application programming interface;
Error analysis;
Building codes
Identifier / keyword
Software Engineering
URL
http://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08041
Title
Quantifying the benefits of code hints for refactoring deprecated Java APIs
Author
Cristina, David; Kesseli, Pascal; Kroening, Daniel; Zhang, Hanliang
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Dec 11, 2024
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
Publication subject
Biology, Statistics, Physics, Mathematics, Engineering--Electrical Engineering, Computers--Computer Engineering, Business And Economics--Banking And Finance
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-12-12
Milestone dates
2024-12-11 (Submission v1)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
12 Dec 2024
ProQuest document ID
3143450437
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/quantifying-benefits-code-hints-refactoring/docview/3143450437/se-2?accountid=208611
Full text outside of ProQuest
http://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08041
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-12-13
Database
2 databases
  • ProQuest One Academic
  • ProQuest One Academic