Software developers use various tools, such as compilers, runtime engines, and interactive debuggers. Carefully testing these tools is crucial because bugs may slow down the development process, hide problems in the developed software, and sometimes even cause crashes of the deployed software. This talk presents two metamorphic testing approaches targeted at developer tools. First, we present the first metamorphic testing approach for interactive debuggers. The key idea is to transform both the debugged program and the debugging actions, such as adding a breakpoint, via metamorphic transformations. To support the interactive nature of debuggers, we introduce interactive metamorphic testing, which determines the input transformation and the expected behavioral change it causes while the program under test is running. Second, we present MorphQ, the first metamorphic testing approach for quantum computing platforms. The approach is enabled by a novel set of program transformations that exploit quantum-specific metamorphic relationships. Both approaches have revealed bugs in popular developer tools, such as the Chromium JavaScript debugger and the Qiskit quantum computing platform. We conclude the talk with general lessons learned about the challenges faced by metamorphic testing and an outlook on developer tools that still wait to benefit from metamorphic testing.

Michael Pradel is a full professor at the University of Stuttgart, which he joined after a PhD at ETH Zurich, a post-doc at UC Berkeley, an assistant professorship at TU Darmstadt, and a sabbatical at Facebook. His research interests span software engineering, programming languages, security, and machine learning, with a focus on tools and techniques for building reliable, efficient, and secure software. In particular, he is interested in neural software analysis, analyzing web applications, dynamic analysis, and test generation. Michael has been recognized through the Ernst-Denert Software Engineering Award, an Emmy Noether grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG), an ERC Starting Grant, four best/distinguished paper awards, and by being named an ACM Distinguished Member.