Code smells and refactoring: a tertiary systematic literature review

Software systems with code smells are difficult to maintain and evolve, and this impaired quality raises question marks on their future sustainability. Researchers have spent decades studying refactoring and code smells, which are key factors behind this problem. In lieu of the fact that the literature contains a huge collection of research publications that keeps evolving with time, dealing with code smell and refactoring activities is a challenge. Therefore, this paper targets a tertiary systematic literature survey. It aims at defining code smell and refactoring in general, identifying and analysing various tools and techniques available for code smell along with refactoring, identifying standard datasets available in the literature for the research community, and determining actively tackled code smells. This review paper considers 280 primary research publications collected from leading databases. The presented observations and recommendations are crucial for academic researchers as well as industry professionals.