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The Refactoring Browser is a complete re-implementation of the standard
system browsers for VisualWorks, VisualWorks/ENVY, and IBM Smalltalk. In
addition to the features present in the standard browsers, the Refactoring
Browser provides several refactorings that allow programmers to rapidly
change their code without affecting its behavior. This allows programmers to
rapidly make design changes to existing code without having to worry about
introducing errors into the code. In addition to the refactorings, the
Refactoring Browser provides several productivity enhancements that
programmers have requested to make the browser a better programming tool.
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Quotes
This is absolutely the greatest
piece of programming software to come out since the original
Smalltalk browser. It completely changes the way you think about
programming. All those niggling little "well, I should change
this name but..." thoughts go away, because you just change the
name because there is always a single menu item to just change the
name.
When I started using it, I spent
about two hours refactoring at my old pace. I would do a refactoring,
then just kind of stare off into space for the five minutes it would
have taken me to do the refactoring by hand, then do another, stare
into space again. After a while, I caught myself and realized that I
had to learn to think Bigger Refactoring Thoughts, and think them
faster. Now I use probably half and half refactoring and entering new
code, all at the same speed (I should instrument to measure this).
-- Kent Beck
The Refactoring Browser is available in two major forms- Non-ENVY
and ENVY. The Non-ENVY version is distributed as a set of parcels
that can be loaded into VisualWorks 3.0. The ENVY version
works with both VisualWorks/ENVY and IBM VisualAge. It is distributed
as a .dat file which contains a configuration map.
Installation-Non-ENVY
If you are using VisualWorks 3.0 without ENVY,
download
the .zip file with the parcels. After downloading, simply unzip the
file into a parcel directory and load the RefactoringBrowser parcel.
You might need to edit your parcel path so that the
RefactoringBrowser parcel that was sent with VisualWorks isn't loaded
instead of this one (or you could just remove the RefactoringBrowser
parcel from the goodies/other directory).
Installation-ENVY
To install the browser in an ENVY environment, you need to
decompress the
ENVY-Browser.zip
file to create the Browser.dat file. Once you have done this, you'll
first import the "Refactoring Browser" configuration map
for the browser into ENVY and then load the config map for the
browser.
Documentation
There are many different tools in the refactoring browser. The
following list contains links to descriptions and documentation for
each part.
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