SCAM 2023 - MicroTestCarver - Replication Package

This replication package contains the implementation, and evaluation results used in the study "Generating Understandable Unit Tests through End-to-End Test Scenario Carving", which is submitted for SCAM 2023. The package is intended to allow other researchers to replicate the study's results and methods.

Implementation

The implementation of MicroTestCarver and Modified-BTrace that are used in the study is included in the implementation folder. They are written in java.

MicroTestCarver is composed three phases Instrumentation, Parsing, and Test Generation. To make it easier to run these, we developed CLI. There are two commands: trace and parser (parse and generate tests).

implementation
    .
    |--- MicroTestCarver/             	The implementation of MicroTestCarver framework.
         |--- src/main/java/
         |    |--- trace/               The implementation of Trace phase.
         |    |--- parser/              The implementation of Parse phase.
         |    |--- test_generator/      The implementation of Test Generation phase.
         |    |--- commands/            CLI commands (parser and trace).
    |--- Modified-BTrace/             	As an instrumentation tool, we developed some additional functionality for BTrace.

Instrumentation

prerequisite

In order to trace the application, it needs to use the modified btrace. If you are using SDKMAN, do these steps:

cd implementation/Modified-Btrace
source config_build.sh
./gradlew :btrace-dist:build
cp btrace-dist/build/resources/main/<Btrace-Version> ~/.sdkman/candidates/btrace/<Btrace-Version>
sdk default btrace <Btrace-Version>

Trace the desired application

trace -p <port> -cp <package-pattern> -m <method-pattern> -ti <traceignore-file> -tt <tracefile>

Optional subcommands:
-l: the log will be displayed on Shell instead of writing on a file. -ti: if you want to ignore specific classes, you can use traceignore file which accepts Wildcard Pattern Matching -tt: if you want to use a specific trace file, instead of the default one

If you want to use XML serialization type (default is JSON), you need to set SERIALIZE_TYPE = "xml" in callTrace.java. Also, if you want to change the trace script, it is possible by changing this file.
In addition, it is possible to use execution-trace.sh instead of the trace command.

MicroTestCarver/
    src/main
    |--- java/
    |    |--- trace/
    |    |    |--- CallTrace.java
    |--- resources
    |    |--- trace-execution.sh

Parsing and Test Generation

In order to parse the trace information and generate tests, you can run this command:

parse -f <output-trace-log-file> -i <app-directory> -p <pool-directory> -t <serialization-type> parse

Optional subcommands: -v: create call graphs visualization -d: it allows duplication of test cases

Here is the structure of these two phases:

MicroTestCarver/
    src/main
    |--- java/
    |    |--- parser/
    |    |    |--- (Arg, ArgRepetition, Clazz, LeafMethod, NodeMethod)  fundamental classes that represent the information that gathered from the trace informations.
    |    |    |--- Parser.java             	the main class to parse the trace information. 
    |    |--- test_generator/
    |    |    |--- VelocityRunner.java          run the velocity templates and generate tests. 
    |    |    |--- CombineClazz.java            combine the dynamic class with static class.
    |    |    |--- TestMethodGenerator.java     generate the body of a test.
    |    |    |--- AssertionGenerator.java      generate an assertion
    |    |    |--- unmarshaller/                reproduce (unmarshal) the objects.
    |--- resources
    |    |--- vtemplates/                       the velocity templates.     

Evaluation

Methodology

We gathered the projects from GitHub (200 projects) that have these criteria:

• The language of the project is Java.
• It is a web application.
• The project is popular, active, and mature as measured in terms of forks, stars, and commits.
• The project has a test suite.

The questionnaire questions can be found in the questionnaire folder.

You can find and reuse this from the following directory:

methodology/
    .
    |--- projects-dataset-collection/            the implementation for collecting the projects.
    |   |--- selected_projects_sorted.csv        the results of the dataset, and that is ranked based on the score.
    |--- questionnaire                           the pdf of questionanaire questions

Raw Data

We applied MicroTestCarver on three study subjects: Spring-Testing, Petclinic, LAB-Insurance, and Alfio.
The trace information for each project can be found in the raw-trace-information folder.

Recorded E2E Tests

We record E2E tests for each folder in the recorded-E2E-tests folder.

Results

In our research questions, first, we consider feasibility. For RQ2 and RQ3, we compared the carved tests with the EvoSuite-generated tests and manually-written tests. The results of RQ2 and RQ3 can be found in the survey-RQ2-RQ3 folder. SCAM Survey Results is the results of the questionnaire. Comments pdfs showing the analysis of pariticapnts' comments in the criteria-based questions. Also, the chart of the criteria-based is located in SCAM-data-analysis.

You can find the results in the following directories:

results/
    .
    |--- coverage/                          the coverage for each subject studies.
    |--- EvoSuite-generated-tests/          the tests that are generated by EvoSuite.
    |--- manually-written-tests/            the tests that are written manually.
    |--- MTC-generated-tests/               the tests that are generated by MicroTestCarver.
    |--- survey-RQ2-RQ3/                    the results and analysis of participants' opinions.