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Test automation in open-source Android apps: a large-scale empirical study

Authors:

Navid Salehnamadi,

Sam MalekAuthors Info & Claims

ASE '20: Proceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

Pages 1078 - 1089

https://doi.org/10.1145/3324884.3416623

Published: 27 January 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Automated testing of mobile apps has received significant attention in recent years from researchers and practitioners alike. In this paper, we report on the largest empirical study to date, aimed at understanding the test automation culture prevalent among mobile app developers. We systematically examined more than 3.5 million repositories on GitHub and identified more than 12, 000 non-trivial and real-world Android apps. We then analyzed these non-trivial apps to investigate (1) the prevalence of adoption of test automation; (2) working habits of mobile app developers in regards to automated testing; and (3) the correlation between the adoption of test automation and the popularity of projects. Among others, we found that (1) only 8% of the mobile app development projects leverage automated testing practices; (2) developers tend to follow the same test automation practices across projects; and (3) popular projects, measured in terms of the number of contributors, stars, and forks on GitHub, are more likely to adopt test automation practices. To understand the rationale behind our observations, we further conducted a survey with 148 professional and experienced developers contributing to the subject apps. Our findings shed light on the current practices and future research directions pertaining to test automation for mobile app development.

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Cited By

Yu LAlégroth EChatzipetrou PGorschek T(2024)A Roadmap for Using Continuous Integration EnvironmentsCommunications of the ACM10.1145/363151967:6(82-90)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631519
Taeb MSwearngin ASchoop ECheng RJiang YNichols J(2024)AXNav: Replaying Accessibility Tests from Natural LanguageProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642777(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Salehnamadi NHe ZMalek S(2023)Assistive-Technology Aided Manual Accessibility Testing in Mobile Apps, Powered by Record-and-ReplayProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580679(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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Index Terms

Test automation in open-source Android apps: a large-scale empirical study
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASE '20: Proceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

December 2020

1449 pages

ISBN:9781450367684

DOI:10.1145/3324884

General Chair:
John Grundy,
Program Chairs:
Claire Le Goues,
David Lo

Copyright © 2020 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 27 January 2021

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ASE '20

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ASE '20: 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

December 21 - 25, 2020

Virtual Event, Australia

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Overall Acceptance Rate 82 of 337 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Yu LAlégroth EChatzipetrou PGorschek T(2024)A Roadmap for Using Continuous Integration EnvironmentsCommunications of the ACM10.1145/363151967:6(82-90)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631519
Taeb MSwearngin ASchoop ECheng RJiang YNichols J(2024)AXNav: Replaying Accessibility Tests from Natural LanguageProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642777(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642777
Salehnamadi NHe ZMalek S(2023)Assistive-Technology Aided Manual Accessibility Testing in Mobile Apps, Powered by Record-and-ReplayProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580679(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580679
Li CXiong YLi ZYang WPan M(2023)Mobile Test Script Generation from Natural Language Descriptions2023 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security (QRS)10.1109/QRS60937.2023.00042(348-359)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/QRS60937.2023.00042
Gambi AGouni HBerreiter DTymofyeyev VFazzini M(2023)Action-Based Test Carving for Android Apps2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops (ICSTW)10.1109/ICSTW58534.2023.00032(107-116)Online publication date: Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSTW58534.2023.00032
Rua RSaraiva J(2023)PyAnaDroid: A fully-customizable execution pipeline for benchmarking Android Applications2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00077(586-591)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00077
Gambi ALi MFazzini M(2023)Artisan: An Action-Based Test Carving Tool for Android Apps2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00076(580-585)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00076
Gu RRojas J(2023)An Empirical Study on the Adoption of Scripted GUI Testing for Android Apps2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering Workshops (ASEW)10.1109/ASEW60602.2023.00030(179-182)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASEW60602.2023.00030
Rua RSaraiva J(2023)A large-scale empirical study on mobile performance: energy, run-time and memoryEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10391-y29:1Online publication date: 27-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10391-y
Qian JMa YLin CChen L(2022)Accelerating OCR-Based Widget Localization for Test Automation of GUI ApplicationsProceedings of the 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3551349.3556966(1-13)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2022
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