Refactoring Browsers (was: [ann] AEditor 0.10, folding added)

[Jim Weirich]

Have you ever spend more then a few minutes to think about the
problems with refactoring in script languages and especially with
ruby ?

I guess you didn't.

The fexibility of languages like ruby makes it impossible to ever
write something like intellij. And it is not a parser problem. I can
write a full ruby parser in a weekend, but this would give me no clue
about the behaviour.

This is an interesting assertion considering that the original
refactoring browser was written for Smalltalk which certainly is no
slouch when it comes to flexibility. So I would guess that a number of
refactorings would be possible, certainly enough to be useful.

I can see certain refactorings being more difficult in a Duck Typed
language, e.g. renaming a method (how do you if *this* use of a method
is one to be changed).

Here's a question to folks that have used both the Smalltalk refactoring
browser and one of the Java IDEs (e.g. IntelliJ or Eclipse): In what
ways did refactoring support differ between the two languages?

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

talking about refactoring..

It would be really nice with a tool which can tell
which code-lines in a project, which is untested.
Then you can easily identify weak parts which maybe
will need better unittesting.
I think this decipline is called 'path testing'.
Does such tool for ruby exist ?

Search for "zen" on RAA. Look for something like zenspider, which I
haven't used but have heard good things.

Gavin