ICST 2023
Sun 16 - Thu 20 April 2023 Dublin, Ireland
Wed 19 Apr 2023 14:40 - 15:00 at Pearse suite - Session 15: Flaky Tests Chair(s): John Micco

Non-deterministically passing and failing test cases, so-called flaky tests, have recently become a focus area of software engineering research. While this research focus has been met with some enthusiastic endorsement from industry, prior work nevertheless mostly studied flakiness using a code-centric approach by mining software repositories. What data extracted from software repositories cannot tell us, however, is how developers perceive flakiness: How prevalent is test flakiness in developers’ daily routine, how does it affect them, and most importantly: What do they want us researchers to do about it? To answer these questions, we surveyed 335 professional software developers and testers in different domains. The survey respondents confirm that flaky tests are a common and serious problem, thus reinforcing ongoing research on flaky test detection. Developers are less worried about the computational costs caused by re-running tests and more about the loss of trust in the test outcomes. Therefore, they would like to have IDE plugins to detect flaky code as well as better visualizations of the problem, particularly dashboards showing test outcomes over time; they also wish for more training and information on flakiness. These important aspects will require the attention of researchers as well as tool developers.

Wed 19 Apr

Displayed time zone: Dublin change

14:00 - 15:40
Session 15: Flaky TestsPrevious Editions / Research Papers at Pearse suite
Chair(s): John Micco VMware
14:00
20m
Talk
Evaluating Features for Machine Learning Detection of Order- and Non-Order-Dependent Flaky Tests
Previous Editions
Owain Parry The University of Sheffield, Gregory Kapfhammer Allegheny College, Michael Hilton Carnegie Mellon University, Phil McMinn University of Sheffield
DOI
14:20
20m
Talk
An Empirical Study of Flaky Tests in Python
Previous Editions
Martin Gruber BMW Group, University of Passau, Stephan Lukasczyk University of Passau, Florian Kroiß , Gordon Fraser University of Passau
DOI
14:40
20m
Talk
A Survey on How Test Flakiness Affects Developers and What Support They Need To Address It
Previous Editions
Martin Gruber BMW Group, University of Passau, Gordon Fraser University of Passau
DOI
15:00
20m
Talk
Practical Flaky Test Prediction using Common Code Evolution and Test History Data
Research Papers
Martin Gruber BMW Group, University of Passau, Michael Heine BMW Group; Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Programming Systems Group, Norbert Oster Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Programming Systems Group, Michael Philippsen Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Programming Systems Group, Gordon Fraser University of Passau
Pre-print
15:20
20m
Talk
A Qualitative Study on the Sources, Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies of Flaky Tests
Previous Editions
Sarra Habchi Ubisoft, Guillaume Haben University of Luxembourg, Mike Papadakis University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Maxime Cordy University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Yves Le Traon University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
DOI