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Documents authored by Gheyi, Rohit

Document
Technical Track Paper
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.39
A Catalog of Transformations to Remove Dockerfile Smells

Authors: Eduardo Barros, Márcio Ribeiro, Valeria Pontillo, Luana Martins, Fabio Palomba, Baldoino Fonseca, Rohit Gheyi, and Ivan Machado

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 394, 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)

Abstract
Background. Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) has become a standard in software deployment, with Dockerfiles among its most prevalent formats. However, Dockerfiles often exhibit Dockerfile smells, violations of best practices that can harm reproducibility, build time, image size, and security. Although prior work has proposed detectors, fixes, and refactoring catalogs, existing knowledge remains mostly descriptive or illustrative, lacking explicit transformation rules with source and target structures, and applicability conditions intended to support behavior-preserving application. Aims. This work aims to provide a catalog of formalized transformation rules for removing Dockerfile smells and to evaluate how practitioners perceive the resulting Dockerfile. Method. We formalized rules for a set of ten Dockerfile transformations and conducted a mixed-method empirical study with 59 participants: 39 survey respondents and 20 interviewees from industry and academia with varied levels of Docker experience. Results. Participants generally preferred the resulting Dockerfiles, which achieved an overall mean acceptance rate of 76%. Nine rules were accepted by a majority of participants, with the highest acceptance rate reaching 95%. Participants favored transformations that improved stability, security, and build time, but were less favorable toward transformations that reduced readability or made debugging harder. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that formalized Dockerfile transformations are a promising basis for refactoring support, but their adoption depends on balancing technical quality improvements with developers’ practical expectations.
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Eduardo Barros, Márcio Ribeiro, Valeria Pontillo, Luana Martins, Fabio Palomba, Baldoino Fonseca, Rohit Gheyi, and Ivan Machado. A Catalog of Transformations to Remove Dockerfile Smells. In 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 394, pp. 39:1-39:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{barros_et_al:LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.39,
  author =	{Barros, Eduardo and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Pontillo, Valeria and Martins, Luana and Palomba, Fabio and Fonseca, Baldoino and Gheyi, Rohit and Machado, Ivan},
  title =	{{A Catalog of Transformations to Remove Dockerfile Smells}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)},
  pages =	{39:1--39:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-450-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{394},
  editor =	{Feldt, Robert and Paasivaara, Maria and Mendez, Daniel and Wagner, Stefan and Bar\'{o}n, Marvin Mu\~{n}oz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.39},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-280070},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.39},
  annote =	{Keywords: Docker, Dockerfile, Refactoring, Catalog, Transformation, Quality}
}
Document
Technical Track Paper
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.41
Evaluating Language Models on Cross-Language Code Functional Equivalence

Authors: Hui Sun, Anderson Uchôa, Rohit Gheyi, and Wesley K. G. Assunção

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 394, 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)

Abstract
Background. Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong performance across a variety of code-understanding tasks, leading many to believe that they can reason about program semantics. A fundamental test of this capability is assessing code functional equivalence. However, existing evaluations primarily focus on single-language settings or rely on synthetically generated code, raising concerns about whether current results reflect true semantic understanding. Aims. We investigate whether LLMs can accurately judge functional equivalence across different programming languages in human-written code, a setting that requires deeper reasoning beyond superficial similarity. Method. We introduce PolyHuman, a dataset of human-written programs in CPP, Java, and Python. Using this dataset, we evaluate intra- and inter-language equivalence detection across open-weight and proprietary LLMs, selecting GPT-o4-mini as a representative model to assess stability. We then manually analyze 81 cases of systematic disagreement in which models incorrectly judge functional equivalence, examining the code logic and the generated Chain-of-Thought reasoning. Finally, we categorize these failures and compare them across GPT-o4-mini, Claude-Opus-4.7, and Gemini-3-Flash to determine whether they reflect model-specific issues or broader limitations of state-of-the-art LLMs. Results. We identify a difficulty-dependent breakdown in equivalence judgment (harder problems make the model increasingly prone to misclassifying non-equivalent code as equivalent), a model-specific sensitivity to programming language for the best-performing model (particularly a more conservative behavior on Python), and a partial reliance on similarity-based cues. GPT-o4-mini also shows substantial run-to-run instability under identical settings, indicating inconsistent rather than absent capability. Its failures are mainly due to (1) a lack of knowledge relevant to judging code functional equivalence and (2) abstraction-level reasoning failure, such as premature conclusion, semantic-level misunderstanding, and implementation-level error. We also observed that several analyzed failures involved loops and conditional branches. Conclusions. Current LLMs do not reliably capture functional equivalence within or across languages. Our findings highlight the need for more realistic benchmarks and suggest improvements through better reasoning-path selection and by addressing reasoning gaps across the identified failure levels.
Cite as

Hui Sun, Anderson Uchôa, Rohit Gheyi, and Wesley K. G. Assunção. Evaluating Language Models on Cross-Language Code Functional Equivalence. In 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 394, pp. 41:1-41:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{sun_et_al:LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.41,
  author =	{Sun, Hui and Uch\^{o}a, Anderson and Gheyi, Rohit and Assun\c{c}\~{a}o, Wesley K. G.},
  title =	{{Evaluating Language Models on Cross-Language Code Functional Equivalence}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)},
  pages =	{41:1--41:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-450-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{394},
  editor =	{Feldt, Robert and Paasivaara, Maria and Mendez, Daniel and Wagner, Stefan and Bar\'{o}n, Marvin Mu\~{n}oz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.41},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-280091},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.41},
  annote =	{Keywords: Empirical software engineering, code functional equivalence, generative AI, cross-language analysis, benchmark, failure analysis}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/DARTS.1.1.7
The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study (Artifact)

Authors: Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi

Published in: DARTS, Volume 1, Issue 1, Special Issue of the 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015)

Abstract
This appendix presents detailed information about the research methods we used in the study, subject characterization, grounded theory process that we followed strictly, and the survey we performed in the study. It provides helpful data for understanding the subtler points of the companion paper and for reproducibility.
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Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi. The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study (Artifact). In Special Issue of the 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015). Dagstuhl Artifacts Series (DARTS), Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 7:1-7:32, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)

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@Article{medeiros_et_al:DARTS.1.1.7,
  author =	{Medeiros, Fl\'{a}vio and K\"{a}stner, Christian and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Nadi, Sarah and Gheyi, Rohit},
  title =	{{The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study (Artifact)}},
  pages =	{7:1--7:32},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Artifacts Series},
  ISSN =	{2509-8195},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{1},
  number =	{1},
  editor =	{Medeiros, Fl\'{a}vio and K\"{a}stner, Christian and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Nadi, Sarah and Gheyi, Rohit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DARTS.1.1.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-55162},
  doi =		{10.4230/DARTS.1.1.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: C Preprocessor, CPP, Interviews, Surveys, and Grounded Theory}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495
The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study

Authors: Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 37, 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015)

Abstract
The C preprocessor has received strong criticism in academia, among others regarding separation of concerns, error proneness, and code obfuscation, but is widely used in practice. Many (mostly academic) alternatives to the preprocessor exist, but have not been adopted in practice. Since developers continue to use the preprocessor despite all criticism and research, we ask how practitioners perceive the C preprocessor. We performed interviews with 40 developers, used grounded theory to analyze the data, and cross-validated the results with data from a survey among 202 developers, repository mining, and results from previous studies. In particular, we investigated four research questions related to why the preprocessor is still widely used in practice, common problems, alternatives, and the impact of undisciplined annotations. Our study shows that developers are aware of the criticism the C preprocessor receives, but use it nonetheless, mainly for portability and variability. Many developers indicate that they regularly face preprocessor-related problems and preprocessor-related bugs. The majority of our interviewees do not see any current C-native technologies that can entirely replace the C preprocessor. However, developers tend to mitigate problems with guidelines, even though those guidelines are not enforced consistently. We report the key insights gained from our study and discuss implications for practitioners and researchers on how to better use the C preprocessor to minimize its negative impact.
Cite as

Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi. The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study. In 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 37, pp. 495-518, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)

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@InProceedings{medeiros_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495,
  author =	{Medeiros, Fl\'{a}vio and K\"{a}stner, Christian and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Nadi, Sarah and Gheyi, Rohit},
  title =	{{The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study}},
  booktitle =	{29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015)},
  pages =	{495--518},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-86-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{37},
  editor =	{Boyland, John Tang},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-52350},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495},
  annote =	{Keywords: C Preprocessor, CPP, Interviews, Surveys, and Grounded Theory}
}

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