A Catalog of Bad Smells in Design-by-Contract Methodologies with Java Modeling Language

Bad smells are usually related to program source code, arising from bad design and programming practices. Refactoring activities are often motivated by the detection of bad smells. With the increasing adoption of Design-by-Contract (DBC) methodologies in formal software development, evidence of bad design practices can similarly be found in programs that combine actual production code with interface contracts. These contracts can be written in languages, such as the Java Modeling Language (JML), an extension to the Java syntax. This paper presents a catalog of bad smells that appear during DBC practice, considering JML as the language for specifying contracts. These smells are described over JML constructs, although several can appear in other DBC languages. The catalog contains 6 DBC smells. We evaluate the recurrence of DBC smells in two ways: first by describing a small study with graduate student projects, and second by counting occurrences of smells in contracts from the JML models application programming interface (API). This API contains classes with more than 1,600 lines in contracts. Along with the documented smells, suggestions are provided for minimizing the impact or even removing a bad smell. It is believed that initiatives towards the cataloging of bad smells are useful for establishing good design practices in DBC.