Generating software tests automatically is one of the great promises of Software Analyses and Testing. Traditionally, building a test generator (or “fuzzer”) has been work that would take months, if not years of work; extending fuzzers for particular purposes wasn’t an easy thing to do either. In this lecture, I introduce students and researchers into “Generating Software Tests” (fuzzingbook.org), which is both a textbook and executable software collection for a large number of test generation techniques. Starting from simple fuzzers, I show how to develop and build a number of test generation approaches, from simple random and feedback-driven fuzzing to advanced techniques such as grammar-based testing or automated GUI testing – using super-compact Python code that can be extended and adapted within minutes. The session will be mainly live coding and experimenting, with plenty of opportunities for interaction and further suggestions. All examples can be run live in your browser at fuzzingbook.org.

Andreas Zeller is Faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, and professor for Software Engineering at Saarland University, both in Saarbrücken, Germany. In 2010, Zeller was inducted as Fellow of the ACM for his contributions to automated debugging and mining software archives, for which he also obtained the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award in 2018. His current work focuses on specification mining and test case generation, funded by grants from DFG and the European Research Council (ERC).