1 research outputs found
A Pattern-based Approach to Detect and Improve Non-descriptive Test Names
Unit tests are an important artifact that supports the software development
process in several ways. For example, when a test fails, its name can provide
the first step towards understanding the purpose of the test. Unfortunately,
unit tests often lack descriptive names. In this paper, we propose a new,
pattern-based approach that can help developers improve the quality of test
names of JUnit tests by making them more descriptive. It does this by detecting
non-descriptive test names and in some cases, providing additional information
about how the name can be improved. Our approach was assessed using an
empirical evaluation on 34352 JUnit tests. The results of the evaluation show
that the approach is feasible, accurate, and useful at discriminating
descriptive and non-descriptive names with a 95% true-positive rate.Comment: Accepted by The Journal of Systems & Softwar