PROZE: Generating Parameterized Unit Tests Informed by Runtime Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Tiwari, Deepika, Gamage, Yogya, Monperrus, Martin, Baudry, Benoit
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Tiwari, Deepika
Gamage, Yogya
Monperrus, Martin
Baudry, Benoit
author_facet Tiwari, Deepika
Gamage, Yogya
Monperrus, Martin
Baudry, Benoit
contents Typically, a conventional unit test (CUT) verifies the expected behavior of the unit under test through one specific input / output pair. In contrast, a parameterized unit test (PUT) receives a set of inputs as arguments, and contains assertions that are expected to hold true for all these inputs. PUTs increase test quality, as they assess correctness on a broad scope of inputs and behaviors. However, defining assertions over a set of inputs is a hard task for developers, which limits the adoption of PUTs in practice. In this paper, we address the problem of finding oracles for PUTs that hold over multiple inputs. We design a system called PROZE, that generates PUTs by identifying developer-written assertions that are valid for more than one test input. We implement our approach as a two-step methodology: first, at runtime, we collect inputs for a target method that is invoked within a CUT; next, we isolate the valid assertions of the CUT to be used within a PUT. We evaluate our approach against 5 real-world Java modules, and collect valid inputs for 128 target methods from test and field executions. We generate 2,287 PUTs, which invoke the target methods with a significantly larger number of test inputs than the original CUTs. We execute the PUTs and find 217 that provably demonstrate that their oracles hold for a larger range of inputs than envisioned by the developers. From a testing theory perspective, our results show that developers express assertions within CUTs that are general enough to hold beyond one particular input.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_00768
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PROZE: Generating Parameterized Unit Tests Informed by Runtime Data
Tiwari, Deepika
Gamage, Yogya
Monperrus, Martin
Baudry, Benoit
Software Engineering
Typically, a conventional unit test (CUT) verifies the expected behavior of the unit under test through one specific input / output pair. In contrast, a parameterized unit test (PUT) receives a set of inputs as arguments, and contains assertions that are expected to hold true for all these inputs. PUTs increase test quality, as they assess correctness on a broad scope of inputs and behaviors. However, defining assertions over a set of inputs is a hard task for developers, which limits the adoption of PUTs in practice. In this paper, we address the problem of finding oracles for PUTs that hold over multiple inputs. We design a system called PROZE, that generates PUTs by identifying developer-written assertions that are valid for more than one test input. We implement our approach as a two-step methodology: first, at runtime, we collect inputs for a target method that is invoked within a CUT; next, we isolate the valid assertions of the CUT to be used within a PUT. We evaluate our approach against 5 real-world Java modules, and collect valid inputs for 128 target methods from test and field executions. We generate 2,287 PUTs, which invoke the target methods with a significantly larger number of test inputs than the original CUTs. We execute the PUTs and find 217 that provably demonstrate that their oracles hold for a larger range of inputs than envisioned by the developers. From a testing theory perspective, our results show that developers express assertions within CUTs that are general enough to hold beyond one particular input.
title PROZE: Generating Parameterized Unit Tests Informed by Runtime Data
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00768