Evolution of the Practice of Software Testing in Java Projects
Software testing helps developers minimize bugs and errors in their code, improving the overall software quality. In 2013, Kochhar \textit{et al.}~[1] analyzed 20,817 software projects in order to study how prevalent the practice of software testing is in open-source projects. They found that projects with more lines of code (LOC) and projects with more developers tend to have more test cases. Additionally, they found a weak positive correlation between the number of test cases and the number of bugs. Since the conclusions of a study might become irrelevant over time because of the latest practices in the relevant fields, in this paper, we investigate if these conclusions remain stable if we re-evaluate Kochhar \textit{et al.}’s findings on the Java projects that were developed from 2012 to 2021. For evaluation, we use a random sample of 20,000 open-source Java projects each year. Our results show that Kochhar \textit{et al.}’s conclusions regarding the LOC and the weak positive correlation between the number of test cases and bugs remain stable until 2021, and the conclusion regarding the correlation between the number of developers with respect to the number of test cases per developer varies. Our study corroborates most of Kochhar \textit{et al.}’s findings and uncovers the slight changes in their conclusions over the years to help developers refocus in light of the latest findings regarding the practice of software testing.
Tue 16 MayDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
09:50 - 10:30 | Mining ChallengeMining Challenge at Meeting Room 110 Chair(s): Audris Mockus The University of Tennessee | ||
09:50 6mTalk | An Empirical Study to Investigate Collaboration Among Developers in Open Source Software (OSS) Mining Challenge Weijie Sun University of Alberta, Samuel Iwuchukwu University of Alberta, Abdul Ali Bangash University of Alberta, Canada, Abram Hindle University of Alberta Pre-print | ||
09:56 6mTalk | Insights into Female Contributions in Open-Source Projects Mining Challenge Arifa Islam Champa Idaho State University, Md Fazle Rabbi Idaho State University, Minhaz F. Zibran Idaho State University, Md Rakibul Islam University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire Pre-print | ||
10:02 6mTalk | The Secret Life of CVEs Mining Challenge Piotr Przymus Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Mikołaj Fejzer Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Jakub Narębski Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Krzysztof Stencel University of Warsaw Pre-print | ||
10:08 6mTalk | Evolution of the Practice of Software Testing in Java Projects Mining Challenge Anisha Islam Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Nipuni Tharushika Hewage Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Abdul Ali Bangash University of Alberta, Canada, Abram Hindle University of Alberta Pre-print | ||
10:14 6mTalk | Keep the Ball Rolling: Analyzing Release Cadence in GitHub Projects Mining Challenge Oz Kilic Carleton University, Nathaniel Bowness University of Ottawa, Olga Baysal Carleton University Pre-print |