Related papers: Mutation Testing as a Safety Net for Test Code Ref…

We aim to explore how developers document their refactoring activities during the software life cycle. We call such activity Self-Affirmed Refactoring (SAR), which indicates developers' documentation of their refactoring activities. SAR is…

Code changes are an integral part of the software development process. Many code changes are meant to improve the code without changing its functional behavior, e.g., refactorings and performance improvements. Unfortunately, validating…

Refactoring is a crucial technique for improving the efficiency and maintainability of software by restructuring its internal design while preserving its external behavior. While classical programs have benefited from various refactoring…

With the rapid development of deep learning, the implementation of intricate algorithms and substantial data processing have become standard elements of deep learning projects. As a result, the code has become progressively complex as the…

Various proxy metrics for test quality have been defined in order to guide developers when writing tests. Code coverage is particularly well established in practice, even though the question of how coverage relates to test quality is a…

Complex software can be hard to read, adapt, and maintain. Refactoring it can create cleaner and self-explanatory code. Refactoring tools try to guide developers towards better code, with more quality. However, most of them take too long to…

Testing has become an indispensable activity of software development, yet writing good and relevant tests remains a quite challenging task. One well-known problem is that it often is impossible or unrealistic to test for every outcome, as…

Refactoring is a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behaviour. A database refactoring is a small change to the database schema which…

Context. Source code refactoring is a well-established approach to improving source code quality without compromising its external behavior. Motivation. The literature described the benefits of refactoring, yet its application in practice…

Mutation testing is an established fault-based testing technique. It operates by seeding faults into the programs under test and asking developers to write tests that reveal these faults. These tests have the potential to reveal a large…

Commits often involve refactorings -- behavior-preserving code modifications aiming at software design improvements. Refactoring operations pose a challenge to code reviewers, as distinguishing them from behavior-altering changes is often…

Mutation analysis is an effective technique to evaluate a test suite adequacy in terms of revealing unforeseen bugs in software. Traditional source- or IR-level mutation analysis is not applicable to the software only available in binary…

Software systems are evolving by adding new functions and modifying existing functions over time. Through the evolution, the structure of software is becoming more complex and so the understandability and maintainability of software systems…

In this paper, we present a tertiary systematic literature review of previous surveys, secondary systematic literature reviews, and systematic mappings. We identify the main observations (what we know) and challenges (what we do not know)…

Code metamorphism refers to a computer programming exercise wherein the program modifies its own code (partial or entire) consistently and automatically while retaining its core functionality. This technique is often used for online…

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for automated code refactoring tasks. Although these models can quickly refactor code, the quality may exhibit inconsistencies and unpredictable behavior. In this article, we systematically…

Mutation testing can be used to assess the fault-detection capabilities of a given test suite. To this aim, two characteristics of mutation testing frameworks are of paramount importance: (i) they should generate mutants that are…

This paper proposes configuration testing--evaluating configuration values (to be deployed) by exercising the code that uses the values and assessing the corresponding program behavior. We advocate that configuration values should be…

Mutation testing is an established software quality assurance technique for the assessment of test suites. While it is well-suited to estimate the general fault-revealing capability of a test suite, it is not practical and informative when…

Refactoring is one of the most important activities in software engineering which is used to improve the quality of a software system. With the advancement of deep learning techniques, researchers are attempting to apply deep learning…