Continuous, Evolutionary and Large-Scale: A New Perspective for Automated Mobile App Testing

Linares‐Vásquez, Mario; Moran, Kevin; Poshyvanyk, Denys

doi:10.1109/icsme.2017.27

Cited by 87 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Linares-Vásquez M. et al (2017) have studied the current state-of-the-art in terms of the frameworks, tools, and services available to aid developers in mobile testing [4]. It focused on 1) Automation APIs/Frameworks, 2) Record and Replay Tools, 3) Automated Test Input Generation Techniques, 4) Bug and Error Reporting/Monitoring Tools, 5) Mobile Testing Services, and 6) Device Streaming Tools.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Energy Footprint of Mobile Testing Frameworks

Cruz

Abreu

2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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High energy consumption is a challenging issue that an ever increasing number of mobile applications face today. However, energy consumption is being tested in an ad hoc way, despite being an important non-functional requirement of an application. Such limitation becomes particularly disconcerting during software testing: on the one hand, developers do not really know how to measure energy; on the other hand, there is no knowledge as to what is the energy overhead imposed by the testing framework. In this paper, as we evaluate eight popular mobile UI automation frameworks, we have discovered that there are automation frameworks that increase energy consumption up to roughly 2200%. While limited in the interactions one can do, Espresso is the most energy efficient framework. However, depending on the needs of the tester, Appium, Monkeyrunner, or UIAutomator are good alternatives. In practice, results show that deciding which is the most suitable framework is vital. We provide a decision tree to help developers make an educated decision on which framework suits best their testing needs.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, since automation frameworks have not considered energy consumption as an issue, developers do not have a sense of which framework is more suitable to perform reliable energy measurements. 4. Joule (J) is the energy unit in the International System of Units.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Energy Footprint of Mobile Testing Frameworks

Cruz

Abreu

2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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“…Long Term: Toward a Practical, Comprehensive Framework for Automated GUI-based Testing GUI-based testing is a critical component of the of the testing pipelines of some of the most prevalent types of modern software, such as mobile apps. There has been a wide range of research that aims to help automate various parts of the GUI-based testing process, with a particular focus on mobile apps [14,15]. However, many of these approaches have not yet been adapted in practice due to several practical shortcomings [15,16,17,18].…”

Section: B Long-term: Toward Gui-centric Automated Program Understanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automating Software Development for Mobile Computing Platforms

Moran

2018

2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)

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Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous in today's modern computing landscape. The applications that run on these mobile devices (often referred to as "apps") have become a primary means of computing for millions of users and, as such, have garnered immense developer interest. These apps allow for unique, personal software experiences through touch-based UIs and a complex assortment of sensors. However designing and implementing high quality mobile apps can be a difficult process. This is primarily due to challenges unique to mobile development including change-prone APIs and platform fragmentation, just to name a few. This paper presents the motivation and an overview of a dissertation which presents new approaches for automating and improving mobile app design and development practices. Additionally, this paper discusses potential avenues for future research based upon the work conducted, as well as general lessons learned during the author's tenure as a doctoral student in the general areas of software engineering, maintenance, and evolution.

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“…Hybrid development exacerbates testing issues that are proper of mobile apps in general [18] (especially the issue of Device Fragmentation, i.e. the number of different devices and/or operating systems on which apps have to be tested).…”

Section: Introduction and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fragility of layout-based and visual GUI test scripts: an assessment study on a hybrid mobile application

Coppola

Ardito

Torchiano

2019

Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Automating TEST Case Design, Selection, and Evaluation

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Context: Albeit different approaches exist for automated GUI testing of hybrid mobile applications, the practice appears to be not so commonly adopted by developers. A possible reason for such a low diffusion can be the fragility of the techniques, i.e. the frequent need for maintaining test cases when the GUI of the app is changed.Goal: In this paper, we perform an assessment of the maintenance needed by test cases for a hybrid mobile app, and the related fragility causes.Methods: We evaluated a small test suite with a Layout-based testing tool (Appium) and a Visual one (EyeAutomate) and observed the changes needed by tests during the co-evolution with the GUI of the app.Results: We found that 20% Layout-based test methods and 30% Visual test methods had to be modified at least once, and that each release induced fragilities in 3-4% of the test methods.Conclusion: Fragility of GUI tests can induce relevant maintenance efforts in test suites of large applications. Several principal causes for fragilities have been identified for the tested hybrid application, and guidelines for developers are deduced from them. CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Software verification and validation; Software testing and debugging;

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Continuous, Evolutionary and Large-Scale: A New Perspective for Automated Mobile App Testing

Cited by 87 publications

References 72 publications

On the Energy Footprint of Mobile Testing Frameworks

On the Energy Footprint of Mobile Testing Frameworks

Automating Software Development for Mobile Computing Platforms

Fragility of layout-based and visual GUI test scripts: an assessment study on a hybrid mobile application

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