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ICSE 2021
Mon 17 May - Sat 5 June 2021

Automatic unit test generation that explores the input space and produces effective test cases for given programs have been studied for decades. Many unit test generation tools that can help generate unit test cases with high structural coverage over a program have been examined. However, the fact that existing test generation tools are mainly evaluated on general software programs calls into question about its practical effectiveness and usefulness for machine learning libraries, which are statistically-orientated and have fundamentally different nature and construction from general software projects. In this paper, we set out to investigate the effectiveness of existing unit test generation techniques on machine learning libraries. To investigate this issue, we performed an empirical study on five widely-used machine learning libraries with two popular unit test case generation tools, i.e., EVOSUITE and Randoop. We find that (1) most of the machine learning libraries do not maintain a high-quality unit test suite regarding commonly applied quality metrics such as code coverage (on average is 34.1%) and mutation score (on average is 21.3%), (2) unit test case generation tools, i.e., EVOSUITE and Randoop lead to clear improvements in code coverage and mutation score, however, the improvement is limited, and (3) there exist common patterns of the uncovered code across the five machine learning libraries that can be used to improve unit test case generation tasks.

Wed 26 May

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

18:50 - 19:50
2.5.1. Testing: Automatic Test GenerationJournal-First Papers / Technical Track at Blended Sessions Room 1 +12h
Chair(s): José Miguel Rojas University of Leicester, UK
18:50
20m
Paper
Inputs from Hell: Learning Input Distributions for Grammar-Based Test GenerationJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Ezekiel Soremekun SnT, University of Luxembourg, Esteban Pavese Humboldt University of Berlin, Nikolas Havrikov CISPA, Germany, Lars Grunske Humboldt University of Berlin, Andreas Zeller CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
19:10
20m
Paper
Automatic Unit Test Generation for Machine Learning Libraries: How Far Are We?Technical Track
Technical Track
Song Wang York University, Nishtha Shrestha York University, Abarna Kucheri Subburaman York University, Junjie Wang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Moshi Wei York University, Nachiappan Nagappan Microsoft Research
Link to publication Pre-print Media Attached
19:30
20m
Paper
Using Relative Lines of Code to Guide Automated Test Generation for PythonJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Josie Holmes Northern Arizona University, Iftekhar Ahmed University of California, Irvine, Caius Brindescu Oregon State University, Rahul Gopinath CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, He Zhang Nanjing University, Alex Groce Northern Arizona University
Pre-print Media Attached

Thu 27 May

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

06:50 - 07:50
2.5.1. Testing: Automatic Test GenerationTechnical Track / Journal-First Papers at Blended Sessions Room 1
06:50
20m
Paper
Inputs from Hell: Learning Input Distributions for Grammar-Based Test GenerationJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Ezekiel Soremekun SnT, University of Luxembourg, Esteban Pavese Humboldt University of Berlin, Nikolas Havrikov CISPA, Germany, Lars Grunske Humboldt University of Berlin, Andreas Zeller CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
07:10
20m
Paper
Automatic Unit Test Generation for Machine Learning Libraries: How Far Are We?Technical Track
Technical Track
Song Wang York University, Nishtha Shrestha York University, Abarna Kucheri Subburaman York University, Junjie Wang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Moshi Wei York University, Nachiappan Nagappan Microsoft Research
Link to publication Pre-print Media Attached
07:30
20m
Paper
Using Relative Lines of Code to Guide Automated Test Generation for PythonJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Josie Holmes Northern Arizona University, Iftekhar Ahmed University of California, Irvine, Caius Brindescu Oregon State University, Rahul Gopinath CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, He Zhang Nanjing University, Alex Groce Northern Arizona University
Pre-print Media Attached