FSE 2025
Mon 23 - Fri 27 June 2025 Trondheim, Norway

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Wed 25 Jun 2025 11:50 - 12:10 at Pirsenteret - Software Tests

Test smells arise from poor design practices and insufficient domain knowledge, which can lower the quality of test code and make it harder to maintain and update. Manually refactoring of test smells is time-consuming and error-prone, highlighting the necessity for automated approaches. Current rule-based refactoring methods often struggle in scenarios not covered by predefined rules and lack the flexibility needed to handle diverse cases effectively. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called UTRefactor, a context-enhanced, LLM-based framework for automatic test refactoring in Java projects. UTRefactor extracts relevant context from test code and leverages an external knowledge base that includes test smell definitions, descriptions, and DSL-based refactoring rules. By simulating the manual refactoring process through a chain-of-thought approach, UTRefactor guides the LLM to eliminate test smells in a step-by-step process, ensuring both accuracy and consistency throughout the refactoring. Additionally, we implement a checkpoint mechanism to facilitate comprehensive refactoring, particularly when multiple smells are present. We evaluate UTRefactor on 879 tests from six open-source Java projects, reducing the number of test smells from 2,375 to 265, achieving an 89% reduction. UTRefactor outperforms direct LLM-based refactoring methods by 61.82% in smell elimination and significantly surpasses the performance of a rule-based test smell refactoring tool. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of UTRefactor in enhancing test code quality while minimizing manual involvement.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Wed 25 Jun

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

11:00 - 12:30
11:00
10m
Talk
pytest-ranking: A Regression Test Prioritization Tool for Python
Demonstrations
Runxiang Cheng University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kaiyao Ke University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Darko Marinov University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
11:10
20m
Talk
The Effects of Computational Resources on Flaky Tests
Journal First
Denini Silva Federal University of Pernambuco, Martin Gruber BMW Group, Satyajit Gokhale Northeastern University, Ellen Arteca Northeastern University, Alexi Turcotte CISPA, Marcelo d'Amorim North Carolina State University, Wing Lam George Mason University, Stefan Winter Ulm University and LMU Munich, Jonathan Bell Northeastern University
11:30
20m
Talk
Prioritizing Speech Test Cases
Journal First
Zhou Yang Singapore Management University; University of Alberta, Jieke Shi Singapore Management University, Muhammad Hilmi Asyrofi School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Bowen Xu North Carolina State University, Xin Zhou Singapore Management University, Singapore, DongGyun Han Royal Holloway, University of London, David Lo Singapore Management University
11:50
20m
Talk
Automated Unit Test Refactoring
Research Papers
Yi Gao Zhejiang University, Xing Hu Zhejiang University, Xiaohu Yang Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Zhejiang University
12:10
20m
Talk
Understanding and Characterizing Mock Assertions in Unit Tests
Research Papers
Hengcheng Zhu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Valerio Terragni University of Auckland, Lili Wei McGill University, Shing-Chi Cheung Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Jiarong Wu , Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology
DOI Pre-print