Blogs (1) >>
ICSE 2019
Sat 25 - Fri 31 May 2019 Montreal, QC, Canada
Thu 30 May 2019 11:50 - 12:10 at Laurier - Unit Testing Chair(s): Martin Kropp

Unit tests are a tenant of agile programming methodologies, and are widely used to improve code quality and prevent code regression. A green (passing) test is usually taken as a robust sign that the code under test is valid. However, some green tests contain assertions that are never executed. We call such tests Rotten Green Tests. Rotten Green Tests represent a case worse than a broken test: they report that the code under test is valid, but in fact do not test that validity. We describe an approach to identify rotten green tests by combining simple static and dynamic call-site analyses. Our approach takes into account test helper methods, inherited helpers, and trait compositions, and has been implemented in a tool called DrTest. DrTest reports no false negatives, yet it still reports some false positives due to conditional use or multiple test contexts. Using DrTest we conducted an empirical evaluation of 19,905 real test cases in mature projects of the Pharo ecosystem. The results of the evaluation shows that the tool is effective; it detected 294 tests as rotten – green tests that contain assertions that are not executed. Some rotten tests have been “sleeping” in Pharo for at least 5 years.

Thu 30 May

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

11:00 - 12:30
Unit TestingTechnical Track / Software Engineering in Practice / Papers / Journal-First Papers at Laurier
Chair(s): Martin Kropp University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland
11:00
30m
Talk
(SEIP Talk) Mythical Unit Test CoverageSEIPIndustry Program
Software Engineering in Practice
Vard Antinyan Volvo Car Group, Miroslaw Staron University of Gothenburg
11:30
20m
Research paper
Hunting for Bugs in Code Coverage Tools via Randomized Differential TestingTechnical Track
Technical Track
Yibiao Yang Nanjing University, China, Yuming Zhou , Hao Sun Unaffiliated, Zhendong Su ETH Zurich, Zhiqiang Zuo Nanjing University, China, Lei Xu Nanjing University, Baowen Xu
11:50
20m
Talk
Rotten Green TestsTechnical Track
Technical Track
Julien Delplanque University of Lille, Stéphane Ducasse INRIA Lille, Guillermo Polito Univ. Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille, Inria, UMR 9189 - CRIStAL - Centre de Recherche en Informatique Signal et Automatique de Lille, Andrew P. Black Portland State University and INRIA, Anne Etien Ecole Polytechnique Universitaire de Lille
12:10
10m
Talk
A comprehensive study of pseudo-tested methodsJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Oscar Luis Vera Pérez INRIA, Benjamin Danglot University Lille 1 and INRIA, Martin Monperrus KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Benoit Baudry KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
12:20
10m
Talk
Discussion Period
Papers