Test Smell Detection Tools: A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract

To ensure the quality of a software system, developers perform an activity known as unit testing, where they write code (known as test cases) that verifies the individual software units that make up the system. Like production code, test cases are subject to bad programming practices, known as test smells, that hurt maintenance activities. An essential part of most maintenance activities is program comprehension which involves developers reading the code to understand its behavior to fix issues or update features. In this study, we conduct a controlled experiment with 96 undergraduate computer science students to investigate the impact of two common types of test smells, namely Assertion Roulette and Eager Test, on a student's ability to debug and troubleshoot test case failures. Our findings show that students take longer to correct errors in production code when smells are present in their associated test cases, especially Assertion Roulette. We envision our findings supporting academia in better equipping students with the knowledge and resources in writing and maintaining high-quality test cases. Our experimental materials are available online 1

How Do I Refactor This? An Empirical Study on Refactoring Trends and Topics in Stack Overflow

“…Using code quality tools (e.g., code/design smell detectors [24]) during implementation will supplement the review tasks by automating the time-consuming task of detecting poor-programming practices (e.g., duplicate code, poor identifier naming, high cyclomatic complexity). Furthermore, there should be necessary checks in the project's process to ensure that developers can only ignore specific quality rules after providing valid justification.…”

Developers perception on the severity of test smells: an empirical study

“…Test smells are sub-optimal designs in the unit test code that the developer chose when implementing test cases [1,7,12,15]. Deursen et al [5] presents a catalog of 11 test smells and proposed refactoring strategies to remove them from the test code.…”

“…Aljedaani et al [1] identified 22 tools for test smell detection. Most of the tools support the JUnit framework and Java programming language.…”

“…To this effect, automated support for creating test cases has gained momentum, and the software testing community has released many support tools lately [6,11]. In addition, many tools are providing automated strategies to prevent, detect, and refactor test smells, as discussed by Aljedaani et al [1].…”

Refactoring Assertion Roulette and Duplicate Assert test smells: a controlled experiment

“…Bad design practices in the test code are commonly referred to as test smells [Van Deursen et al 2001]. Test smells have recently gained importance given their effects on the performance of software testing activities, especially from a maintenance perspective [Virgínio et al 2020b, Aljedaani et al 2021. For instance, Empty Test is a test smell that occurs when a test method does not contain any executable instructions.…”