SHF: Small: Assisting Developers in the Creation and Maintenance of Unit Tests

SHF：小型：协助开发人员创建和维护单元测试

• 批准号: 1527093
• 负责人: James Clause
• 金额: $ 45万
• 依托单位: University of Delaware
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1527093&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Small; Assisting; Developers; Creation

To test software, developers must perform two activities: testcreation and test maintenance. The first activity, test creation,consists of developing and implementing a test suite---the set oftests that will be used to evaluate the software. The secondactivity, test maintenance, consists of both understanding existingtest cases and evolving them in response to changes in the applicationthat is being tested. Despite decades of work, both of theseactivities are still expensive and labor-intensive. In this project,we will address the need for useful developer support for both testcreation and test maintenance by investigating and buildingcooperative approaches where automated tools and developers worktogether, each focusing on their respective strengths. Improving theefficiency and effectiveness of both testing activities will bebeneficial in reducing the overall cost of software development and,at the same time, improving software quality.This project will contribute to the state of the art by (1) innovatingin the areas of program analysis and natural-language program analysisand (2) synergistically integrating these two strands of innovations.First, the PIs will investigate cooperative approaches for generating unittests based on developer intent to save developer's time and to lowerthe cognitive barrier for writing tests by automating the tediousaspects of test creation. Second, the PIs will investigate techniques forimproving the comprehensibility of existing tests by automaticallygenerating various forms of test documentation including descriptivetest method names and both summary and explanatory comments. Finally,the PIs will quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate and refine the newlydeveloped techniques to ensure that they are both useful andeffective. The tools and experimental infrastructure developed withinthe project will be released, which will let researchers andpractitioners build on the project's results.

要测试软件，开发人员必须执行两个活动：测试创建和测试维护。第一个活动，测试创建，包括开发和实现测试套件-将用于评估软件的一组测试。第二项活动，测试维护，包括理解现有的测试用例，并根据正在测试的应用程序的变化对其进行演化。尽管工作了几十年，但这两项活动仍然昂贵且劳动密集型。在这个项目中，我们将通过调查和构建自动化工具和开发人员共同工作的协作方法，解决测试创建和测试维护对开发人员有用支持的需求，每个人都专注于各自的优势。提高两个测试活动的效率和效果将有利于降低软件开发的总体成本，同时提高软件质量。该项目将通过(1)在程序分析和自然语言程序分析领域的创新和(2)协同集成这两个创新来促进最先进的技术。首先，PI将研究基于开发人员意图生成单元测试的合作方法，以节省开发人员的时间，并通过自动化测试创建的繁琐方面来降低编写测试的认知障碍。其次，PI将研究通过自动生成各种形式的测试文档(包括描述性测试方法名称以及摘要和说明性注释)来提高现有测试的可理解性的技术。最后，绩效指标将对新开发的技术进行定量和定性的评估和改进，以确保它们都是有用和有效的。在该项目中开发的工具和实验基础设施将被发布，这将让研究人员和实践者在项目结果的基础上再接再厉。