Technical debt in the software development lifecycle: code smells
Vladimir Vladimirovich KACHANOV,
Mikhail Kirillovich ERMAKOV,
Georgiy Alexandrovich PANKRATENKO,
Alexander Vyacheslavovich SPIRIDONOV,
Alexander Sergeevich VOLKOV,
Sergei Igorevich MARKOV https://doi.org/10.15514/ISPRAS-2021-33(6)-7
Abstract
This paper is dedicated to the review of the most popular code smells, which is one of the technical debt components, in addition to methods and instruments for their detection. We conduct a comparative analysis of multiple instruments such as DesigniteJava, PMD, SonarQube. We apply existing tools to set of open-source projects to deduce detection precision and coherence of the selected instruments. We highlight strengths and weaknesses of the approach based on metrics computation and threshold filtering that is used in instruments. Citing of code smells detected by the instruments shows low percentage of true positives (10% for god class and 20% for complex method). We perform literature review of papers suggesting enhancements of the standard approach and alternative approaches that doesn’t involve metrics. To assess the potential of alternative methods we introduce our long method detection prototype with a false positive filtering system based on machine learning methods.
About the Authors
Vladimir Vladimirovich KACHANOV
Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
PhD Student at MIPT, Programmer at ISP RAS
Mikhail Kirillovich ERMAKOV
Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Candidate of Technical Sciences, Researcher
Georgiy Alexandrovich PANKRATENKO
Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Intern Researcher
Alexander Vyacheslavovich SPIRIDONOV
Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Programmer
Alexander Sergeevich VOLKOV
Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Researcher
Sergei Igorevich MARKOV
Институт системного программирования им. В.П. Иванникова РАН
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Researcher
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Review
For citations:
KACHANOV V.V., ERMAKOV M.K., PANKRATENKO G.A., SPIRIDONOV A.V., VOLKOV A.S., MARKOV S.I. Technical debt in the software development lifecycle: code smells. Proceedings of the Institute for System Programming of the RAS (Proceedings of ISP RAS). 2021;33(6):95-110. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.15514/ISPRAS-2021-33(6)-7
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