ReL: A Generic Refactoring Language for Specification and Execution

Refactoring is a powerful technique for improving the structural quality of software models and programs. Besides informal, example-driven descriptions of refactorings, a number of languages for specifying refactorings have been developed. Such refactoring languages are either specific to particular programming languages or to particular application purposes. In this paper, we present the generic refactoring language ReL. ReL is a domain-specific language which can be instantiated for any target language with Backus-Naur-style grammar. Thus obtained ReL instances are equally well suited for specifying refactorings and executing them. A tool chain for ReL supports the automatic instantiation for target languages as well as the parsing and execution of refactoring descriptions.