Mobile GUI Testing Fragility: A Study on Open-Source Android Applications

Android applications do not seem to be tested as thoroughly as desktop ones. In particular, GUI testing appears generally limited. Like webbased applications, mobile apps suffer from GUI test fragility, i.e. GUI test classes failing or needing updates due to even minor modifications in the GUI or in the Application Under Test. The objective of our study is to estimate the adoption of GUI testing frameworks among Android opensource applications, the quantity of modifications needed to keep test classes up to date, and the amount of them due to GUI test fragility. We introduce a set of 21 metrics to measure the adoption of testing tools, the evolution of test classes and test methods, and to estimate the fragility of test suites. We computed our metrics for six GUI testing frameworks, none of which achieved a significant adoption among Android projects hosted on GitHub. When present, GUI test methods associated with the considered tools are modified often and a relevant portion (70% on average) of those modifications is induced by GUI-related fragilities. On average for the projects considered, more than 7% of the total modified lines of code between consecutive releases belong to test classes developed with the analysed testing frameworks. The measured percentage was higher on average than the one required by other generic test code, based on the JUnit testing framework. Fragility of GUI tests constitute a relevant concern, probably an obstacle for developers to adopt test automation. This first evaluation of the fragility of Android scripted GUI testing can constitute a benchmark for developers and testers leveraging the analysed test tools, and the basis for the definition of a taxonomy of fragility causes and guidelines to mitigate the issue

Application of Meta-Programming Techniques for Accelerating Software Development and Improving Quality.

Annotation- A contemporary software tool has been devised to evaluate software quality through metric analysis techniques This tool calculates pertinent metrics utilizing quality indicators and establishes a composite quality indicator value for software products The intricacies of software quality assessment processes have been elucidated including the examination of software quality s standardization as well as the presentation level of its model This enables the potential for enhancement through the formulation of suitable criteria for quality assessment refining models for metric analysis and quantitatively measuring quality across all phases of project implementation Notably the use of metric analysis to gauge software quality reveals a lack of standardized metrics resulting in varying assessment methods and metrics from different measurement system providers Interpreting metric values also proves challenging for most software users due to a lack of clarity and informativeness Furthermore it has been discovered that while decisions based on cost development duration and designer company reputation influence software implementation choices they do not always guarantee optimal software qualit

Evolution and Fragility of Mobile Automated Test Suites

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen