Projects

Unit Test and Refactor your Code

At the IFS Institute for Software we research “Decremental Development”.
Decremental Development means simplifying program code down to 10% of its size whilst increasing its quality without losing (essential) functionality. Refactoring is one of the techniques to achieve this goal and automated unit testing is an enabler for refactoring.
We work on Eclipse plug-ins providing these techniques for languages lacking refactoring support. So fare we created:

• Refactoring and Unit Testing for C++ with Eclipse CDT
• Refactoring for Ruby Development Tools RDT
• Refactoring for PyDev a Python IDE based on Eclipse

 

The following projects are currently under development:

• The PyDev Refactoring plug-in is currently being extended in a second student project
• PHP Refactoring for PDT, the  PHP IDE  based on Eclipse
• JavaScript Refactoring for JSDT, which is a JavaScript IDE for Eclipse
• Groovy Refactoring for the Groovy Eclipse plug-in

 

Further ideas exist for extending these projects and provide refactoring for other
languages such as Ruby on Rails. We are looking for
sponsors and partners to support these projects with funding.