Teralizer: Semantics-Based Test Generalization from Conventional Unit Tests to Property-Based Tests
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866911322867761152 |
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| author | Glock, Johann Bauer, Clemens Pinzger, Martin |
| author_facet | Glock, Johann Bauer, Clemens Pinzger, Martin |
| contents | Conventional unit tests validate single input-output pairs, leaving most inputs of an execution path untested. Property-based testing addresses this shortcoming by generating multiple inputs satisfying properties but requires significant manual effort to define properties and their constraints. We propose a semantics-based approach that automatically transforms unit tests into property-based tests by extracting specifications from implementations via single-path symbolic analysis. We demonstrate this approach through Teralizer, a prototype for Java that transforms JUnit tests into property-based jqwik tests. Unlike prior work that generalizes from input-output examples, Teralizer derives specifications from program semantics.
We evaluated Teralizer on three progressively challenging datasets. On EvoSuite-generated tests for EqBench and Apache Commons utilities, Teralizer improved mutation scores by 1-4 percentage points. Generalization of mature developer-written tests from Apache Commons utilities showed only 0.05-0.07 percentage points improvement. Analysis of 632 real-world Java projects from RepoReapers highlights applicability barriers: only 1.7% of projects completed the generalization pipeline, with failures primarily due to type support limitations in symbolic analysis and static analysis limitations in our prototype. Based on the results, we provide a roadmap for future work, identifying research and engineering challenges that need to be tackled to advance the field of test generalization.
Artifacts available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17950381 |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_14475 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Teralizer: Semantics-Based Test Generalization from Conventional Unit Tests to Property-Based Tests Glock, Johann Bauer, Clemens Pinzger, Martin Software Engineering Conventional unit tests validate single input-output pairs, leaving most inputs of an execution path untested. Property-based testing addresses this shortcoming by generating multiple inputs satisfying properties but requires significant manual effort to define properties and their constraints. We propose a semantics-based approach that automatically transforms unit tests into property-based tests by extracting specifications from implementations via single-path symbolic analysis. We demonstrate this approach through Teralizer, a prototype for Java that transforms JUnit tests into property-based jqwik tests. Unlike prior work that generalizes from input-output examples, Teralizer derives specifications from program semantics. We evaluated Teralizer on three progressively challenging datasets. On EvoSuite-generated tests for EqBench and Apache Commons utilities, Teralizer improved mutation scores by 1-4 percentage points. Generalization of mature developer-written tests from Apache Commons utilities showed only 0.05-0.07 percentage points improvement. Analysis of 632 real-world Java projects from RepoReapers highlights applicability barriers: only 1.7% of projects completed the generalization pipeline, with failures primarily due to type support limitations in symbolic analysis and static analysis limitations in our prototype. Based on the results, we provide a roadmap for future work, identifying research and engineering challenges that need to be tackled to advance the field of test generalization. Artifacts available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17950381 |
| title | Teralizer: Semantics-Based Test Generalization from Conventional Unit Tests to Property-Based Tests |
| topic | Software Engineering |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14475 |