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Strategies for avoiding text fixture smells during software evolution

Authors:

Michaela Greiler,

Arie van Deursen,

Margaret-Anne StoreyAuthors Info & Claims

MSR '13: Proceedings of the 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories

Pages 387 - 396

Published: 18 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

An important challenge in creating automated tests is how to design test fixtures, i.e., the setup code that initializes the system under test before actual automated testing can start. Test designers have to choose between different approaches for the setup, trading off maintenance overhead with slow test execution. Over time, test code quality can erode and test smells can develop, such as the occurrence of overly general fixtures, obscure in-line code and dead fields. In this paper, we investigate how fixture-related test smells evolve over time by analyzing several thousand revisions of five open source systems. Our findings indicate that setup management strategies strongly influence the types of test fixture smells that emerge in code, and that several types of fixture smells often emerge at the same time. Based on this information, we recommend important guidelines for setup strategies, and suggest how tool support can be improved to help in both avoiding the emergence of such smells as well as how to refactor code when test smells do appear.

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Cited By

Siddiq MDa Silva Santos JTanvir RUlfat NAl Rifat FCarvalho Lopes V(2024)Using Large Language Models to Generate JUnit Tests: An Empirical StudyProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3661167.3661216(313-322)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
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Silva LVilain PCavalcante EDantas FBatista TPinto G(2020)LCCSSProceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3425269.3425283(91-100)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2020
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Peruma AAlmalki KNewman CMkaouer MOuni APalomba FDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)tsDetect: an open source test smells detection toolProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3417921(1650-1654)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
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Strategies for avoiding text fixture smells during software evolution

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Published In

cover image Guide Proceedings

MSR '13: Proceedings of the 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories

May 2013

438 pages

ISBN:9781467329361

General Chair:
Thomas Zimmermann,
Program Chairs:
Massimiliano Di Penta,
Sunghun Kim

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 18 May 2013

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Cited By

Siddiq MDa Silva Santos JTanvir RUlfat NAl Rifat FCarvalho Lopes V(2024)Using Large Language Models to Generate JUnit Tests: An Empirical StudyProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3661167.3661216(313-322)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661167.3661216
Silva LVilain PCavalcante EDantas FBatista TPinto G(2020)LCCSSProceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3425269.3425283(91-100)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3425269.3425283
Peruma AAlmalki KNewman CMkaouer MOuni APalomba FDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)tsDetect: an open source test smells detection toolProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3417921(1650-1654)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368089.3417921
Medeiros HVilain PMylopoulos JJacobsen H(2019)SolUnitProceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering10.5555/3370272.3370300(264-273)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2019
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Medeiros HVilain PPereira V(2019)Reducing the execution time of unit tests of smart contracts in blockchain platformsProceedings of the XV Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3330204.3330225(1-8)Online publication date: 20-May-2019
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Grano GZhang DMøller A(2019)A new dimension of test quality: assessing and generating higher quality unit test casesProceedings of the 28th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3293882.3338984(419-423)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
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De Bleser JDi Nucci DDe Roover CStorey MAdams BHaiduc S(2019)Assessing diffusion and perception of test smells in scala projectsProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2019.00072(457-467)Online publication date: 26-May-2019
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Spadini DAniche MBruntink MBacchelli A(2019)Mock objects for testing java systemsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-018-9663-024:3(1461-1498)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
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Tufano MPalomba FBavota GDi Penta MOliveto RDe Lucia APoshyvanyk DLo DApel SKhurshid S(2016)An empirical investigation into the nature of test smellsProceedings of the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/2970276.2970340(4-15)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2016
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