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Related papers: Test Behaviors, Not Methods! Detecting Tests Obses…

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To assess the quality of a test suite, one can rely on mutation testing, which computes whether the overall test cases are adequately exercising the covered lines. However, this high level of granularity may overshadow the quality of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Victor Veloso , Andre Hora

Nowadays, modern applications are developed using components written in different programming languages. These systems introduce several advantages. However, as the number of languages increases, so does the challenges related to the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-01-18 Mouna Abidi , Md Saidur Rahman , Moses Openja , Foutse Khomh

Code Smell, similar to a bad smell, is a surface indication of something tainted but in terms of software writing practices. This metric is an indication of a deeper problem lies within the code and is associated with an issue which is…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-08-11 Himanshu Gupta , Tanmay G. Kulkarni , Lov Kumar , Lalita Bhanu Murthy Neti , Aneesh Krishna

Test smells, similar to code smells, can negatively impact both the test code and the production code being tested. Despite extensive research on test smells in languages like Java, Scala, and Python, automated tools for detecting test…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-05-08 Partha P. Paul , Md Tonoy Akanda , M. Raihan Ullah , Dipto Mondal , Nazia S. Chowdhury , Fazle M. Tawsif

Code smells are symptoms of potential code quality problems that may affect software maintainability, thus increasing development costs and impacting software reliability. Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities for…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Saymon Souza , Amanda Santana , Eduardo Figueiredo , Igor Muzetti , João Eduardo Montandon , Lionel Briand

The accuracy reported for code smell-detecting tools varies depending on the dataset used to evaluate the tools. Our survey of 45 existing datasets reveals that the adequacy of a dataset for detecting smells highly depends on relevant…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-06-05 Morteza Zakeri-Nasrabadi , Saeed Parsa , Ehsan Esmaili , Fabio Palomba

Software design smells are design attributes which violate the fundamental design principles. Design smells are a key cause of design debt. Although the activities of design smell identification and measurement are predominantly considered…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-10-15 Asif Imran , Tevfik Kosar

Test smells can pose difficulties during testing activities, such as poor maintainability, non-deterministic behavior, and incomplete verification. Existing research has extensively addressed test smells in automated software tests but…

\underline{Context:} Logging is a fundamental yet complex practice in software engineering, essential for monitoring, debugging, and auditing software systems. With the increasing integration of machine learning (ML) components into…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Patrick Loic Foalem , Leuson Da Silva , Foutse Khomh , Ettore Merlo , Heng Li

Test smells are coding issues that typically arise from inadequate practices, a lack of knowledge about effective testing, or deadline pressures to complete projects. The presence of test smells can negatively impact the maintainability and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-07-31 Keila Lucas , Rohit Gheyi , Elvys Soares , Márcio Ribeiro , Ivan Machado

Code smells are seen as major source of technical debt and, as such, should be detected and removed. However, researchers argue that the subjectiveness of the code smells detection process is a major hindrance to mitigate the problem of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-03-07 José Pereira dos Reis , Fernando Brito e Abreu , Glauco de Figueiredo Carneiro

The growth of Python adoption across diverse domains has led to increasingly complex codebases, presenting challenges in maintaining code quality. While numerous tools attempt to address these challenges, they often fall short in providing…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-01-31 Karthik Shivashankar , Antonio Martini

The common use case of code smells assumes causality: Identify a smell, remove it, and by doing so improve the code. We empirically investigate their fitness to this use. We present a list of properties that code smells should have if they…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Idan Amit , Nili Ben Ezra , Dror G. Feitelson

Diverse studies have analyzed the quality of automatically generated test cases by using test smells as the main quality attribute. But recent work reported that generated tests may suffer a number of quality issues not necessarily…

LLMs promise to transform unit test generation from a manual burden into an automated solution. Yet, beyond metrics such as compilability or coverage, little is known about the quality of LLM-generated tests, particularly their…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Wendkûuni C. Ouédraogo , Yinghua Li , Xueqi Dang , Xunzhu Tang , Anil Koyuncu , Jacques Klein , David Lo , Tegawendé F. Bissyandé

Fault-proneness is an indication of programming errors that decreases software quality and maintainability. On the contrary, code smell is a symptom of potential design problems which has impact on fault-proneness. In the literature,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-05-10 Md. Masudur Rahman , Toukir Ahammed , Md. Mahbubul Alam Joarder , Kazi Sakib

Dependency management in modern software development poses many challenges for developers who wish to stay up to date with the latest features and fixes whilst ensuring backwards compatibility. Project maintainers have opted for varied, and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-10-19 Abbas Javan Jafari , Diego Elias Costa , Rabe Abdalkareem , Emad Shihab , Nikolaos Tsantalis

Regression testing is an important phase to deliver software with quality. However, flaky tests hamper the evaluation of test results and can increase costs. This is because a flaky test may pass or fail non-deterministically and to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-09-15 B. H. P. Camara , M. A. G. Silva , A. T. Endo , S. R. Vergilio

Test smells reduce test suite reliability and complicate maintenance. While many methods detect test smells, few support automated removal, and most rely on static analysis or machine learning. This study evaluates models with relatively…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-20 Rian Melo , Pedro Simões , Rohit Gheyi , Marcelo d'Amorim , Márcio Ribeiro , Gustavo Soares , Eduardo Almeida , Elvys Soares

A smell in software source code denotes an indication of suboptimal design and implementation decisions, potentially hindering the code understanding and, in turn, raising the likelihood of being prone to changes and faults. Identifying…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Anh Ho , Anh M. T. Bui , Phuong T. Nguyen , Amleto Di Salle , Bach Le