The TRex TTCN-3 Refactoring and Metrics Tool

Refactoring and metrics are two proven approaches from traditional software development. As part of our research, we adapted them to be applicable for the development of TTCN-3 test suites. Metrics can be used to assess the overall quality of TTCN-3 test suites, but as well to identify and locate individual issues in test suites. Refactorings are systematically source code transformations which improve the internal structure of a TTCN-3 test suite without changing the externally observable behaviour.In this project, the TRex (TTCN-3 Refactoring and Metrics) tool and its underlying concepts of an automated quality assurance of TTCN-3 test suites are developed. TRex calculates automatically TTCN-3 metrics and is as well able to perform automatically refactorings. Using a rule-bases approach, refactorings are associated to metrics. This enables TRex to make automatically suggestions for improving a TTCN-3 test suite.TRex is an open-source (Eclipse Public License) plug-in for the Eclipse platform. In addition to metrics and refactoring, TRex provides an integrated TTCN-3 development environment with state-of-the-art editing capabilities.