Test Smell: A Parasitic Energy Consumer in Software Testing

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Misu, Md Rakib Hossain, Li, Jiawei, Bhattiprolu, Adithya, Liu, Yang, Almeida, Eduardo, Ahmed, Iftekhar
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Misu, Md Rakib Hossain
Li, Jiawei
Bhattiprolu, Adithya
Liu, Yang
Almeida, Eduardo
Ahmed, Iftekhar
author_facet Misu, Md Rakib Hossain
Li, Jiawei
Bhattiprolu, Adithya
Liu, Yang
Almeida, Eduardo
Ahmed, Iftekhar
contents Traditionally, energy efficiency research has focused on reducing energy consumption at the hardware level and, more recently, in the design and coding phases of the software development life cycle. However, software testing's impact on energy consumption did not receive attention from the research community. Specifically, how test code design quality and test smell (e.g., sub-optimal design and bad practices in test code) impact energy consumption has not been investigated yet. This study examined 12 Apache projects to analyze the association between test smell and its effects on energy consumption in software testing. We conducted a mixed-method empirical analysis from two dimensions; software (data mining in Apache projects) and developers' views (a survey of 62 software practitioners). Our findings show that: 1) test smell is associated with energy consumption in software testing. Specifically smelly part of a test case consumes 10.92\% more energy compared to the non-smelly part. 2) certain test smells are more energy-hungry than others, 3) refactored test cases tend to consume less energy than their smelly counterparts, and 4) most developers lack knowledge about test smells' impact on energy consumption. We conclude the paper with several observations that can direct future research and developments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_14548
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Test Smell: A Parasitic Energy Consumer in Software Testing
Misu, Md Rakib Hossain
Li, Jiawei
Bhattiprolu, Adithya
Liu, Yang
Almeida, Eduardo
Ahmed, Iftekhar
Software Engineering
Traditionally, energy efficiency research has focused on reducing energy consumption at the hardware level and, more recently, in the design and coding phases of the software development life cycle. However, software testing's impact on energy consumption did not receive attention from the research community. Specifically, how test code design quality and test smell (e.g., sub-optimal design and bad practices in test code) impact energy consumption has not been investigated yet. This study examined 12 Apache projects to analyze the association between test smell and its effects on energy consumption in software testing. We conducted a mixed-method empirical analysis from two dimensions; software (data mining in Apache projects) and developers' views (a survey of 62 software practitioners). Our findings show that: 1) test smell is associated with energy consumption in software testing. Specifically smelly part of a test case consumes 10.92\% more energy compared to the non-smelly part. 2) certain test smells are more energy-hungry than others, 3) refactored test cases tend to consume less energy than their smelly counterparts, and 4) most developers lack knowledge about test smells' impact on energy consumption. We conclude the paper with several observations that can direct future research and developments.
title Test Smell: A Parasitic Energy Consumer in Software Testing
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.14548