Automatically Generating Single-Responsibility Unit Tests

Automatic test generation aims to save developers time and effort by producing test suites with reasonably high coverage and fault detection. However, the focus of searchbased generation tools in maximizing coverage leaves other properties, such as test quality, coincidental. The evidence shows that developers remain skeptical of using generated tests as they face understandability challenges. Generated tests do not follow a defined structure while evolving, which can result in tests that contain method calls to improve coverage but lack a clear relation to the generated assertions. In my doctoral research, I aim to investigate the effects of providing a preprocess structure to the generated tests, based on the singleresponsibility principle to favor the identification of the focal method under test. To achieve this, we propose to implement different test representations for evolution and evaluate their impact on coverage, fault detection, and understandability. We hypothesize that improving the structure of generated tests will report positive effects on the tests' understandability without significantly affecting the effectiveness. We aim to conduct a quantitative analysis of this proposed approach as well as a developer evaluation of the understandability of these tests.

Authors

Publication Details

Published
2025-04-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/icse-companion66252.2025.00039
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.31
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article

Automatically Generating Single-Responsibility Unit Tests

Geraldine Galindo-Gutierrez
1 citations
Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
2.31
article

Automatically Generating Single-Responsibility Unit Tests

Geraldine Galindo-Gutierrez
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Automatic test generation aims to save developers time and effort by producing test suites with reasonably high coverage and fault detection. However, the focus of searchbased generation tools in maximizing coverage leaves other properties, such as test quality, coincidental. The evidence shows that developers remain skeptical of using generated tests as they face understandability challenges. Generated tests do not follow a defined structure while evolving, which can result in tests that contain method calls to improve coverage but lack a clear relation to the generated assertions. In my doctoral research, I aim to investigate the effects of providing a preprocess structure to the generated tests, based on the singleresponsibility principle to favor the identification of the focal method under test. To achieve this, we propose to implement different test representations for evolution and evaluate their impact on coverage, fault detection, and understandability. We hypothesize that improving the structure of generated tests will report positive effects on the tests' understandability without significantly affecting the effectiveness. We aim to conduct a quantitative analysis of this proposed approach as well as a developer evaluation of the understandability of these tests.

Openalex Percentile: Top 13%
Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
2.31
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