Toward an Implementation of the "Form Template Method" Refactoring

This paper presents an implementation of the "form template method" refactoring. This transformation has not been automated yet, but has many similarities with other transformations such as clone detection and removal or method extraction. Forming a template method is a difficult process because it has to deal with code statements directly. Few abstractions and algorithms have been investigated yet, compared to transformations dealing with higher level aspects such as the classes, methods, fields and their relations. We present a new algorithm that performs this transformation in a semi-automated way on Java programs. We state the difficulties inherent to this transformation and propose solutions to handle them.