ICST 2025
Mon 31 March - Fri 4 April 2025 Naples, Italy
Wed 2 Apr 2025 16:37 - 16:44 at Room A - Software Testing and Fault Analysis Chair(s): Luigi Libero Lucio Starace

To measure and improve the strength of test suites, software projects and their developers commonly use code coverage and aim for a threshold of around 80%. But what is the 80% of the source code that should be covered? To prepare for the development of new, more refined code coverage criteria, we introduce a novel predictive problem in software testing: whether a code line is, or should be, covered by the test suite. In this short paper, we propose the collection of coverage information, source code metrics, and abstract syntax tree data and explore whether they are relevant to predict whether a code line is exercised by the test suite or not. We present a preliminary experiment using four machine learning (ML) algorithms and an open source Java project. We observe that ML classifiers can achieve high accuracy (up to 90%) on this novel predictive problem. We also apply an explainable method to better understand the characteristics of code lines that make them more “appealing” to be covered. Our work opens a research line worth to investigate further, where the focus of the prediction is the code to be tested. Our innovative approach contrasts with most predictive problems in software testing, which aim to predict the test case failure probability.

Wed 2 Apr

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

16:00 - 17:00
Software Testing and Fault AnalysisJournal-First Papers / Short Papers, Vision and Emerging Results at Room A
Chair(s): Luigi Libero Lucio Starace Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
16:00
15m
Talk
Promoting Open Science in Test-driven Software Experiments
Journal-First Papers
Marcus Kessel University of Mannheim, Colin Atkinson University of Mannheim
16:15
15m
Talk
A New Perspective on the Competent Programmer Hypothesis Through the Reproduction of Real Faults With Repeated Mutations
Journal-First Papers
Zaheed Ahmed University of Goettingen, Eike Schwass , Steffen Herbold University of Passau, Fabian Trautsch University of Göttingen, Jens Grabowski
16:30
7m
Talk
Addressing Data Leakage in HumanEval Using Combinatorial Test Design
Short Papers, Vision and Emerging Results
Jeremy Bradbury Ontario Tech University, Riddhi More Ontario Tech University
16:37
7m
Talk
Towards Refined Code Coverage: A New Predictive Problem in Software Testing
Short Papers, Vision and Emerging Results
Carolin Brandt Delft University of Technology, Aurora Ramírez University of Córdoba
Pre-print
16:44
7m
Talk
Weighted Call Frequency-based Fault Localization
Short Papers, Vision and Emerging Results
Attila Szatmári , ORBAN, Aondowase James , Tamás Gergely Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged
16:51
7m
Talk
Towards Cross-Build Differential Testing
Short Papers, Vision and Emerging Results
Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, Tim White , Valerio Terragni University of Auckland, Behnaz Hassanshahi Oracle Labs, Australia