In my previous post, I wrote about ReAssert, the tool I built to automatically fix broken unit tests. Yesterday I received notification that the paper describing the tool got accepted to ASE 2009.
This is the same paper mentioned in my crunch time analysis and typography request.
Here is the (working) abstract:
Developers often change software in ways that cause tests to fail. When this occurs, developers must determine whether failures are caused by errors in the code under test or in the test code itself. In the latter case, developers must repair failing tests or remove them from the test suite. Fixing tests is time consuming but beneficial, since removing tests reduces a test suite's ability to detect regressions. Fortunately, simple program transformations can repair many failing tests automatically.
We present ReAssert, a novel technique and tool that suggests repairs to failing tests' code which cause the tests to pass. Examples include replacing literal values in tests, changing assertion methods, or replacing one assertion with several. If the developer chooses to apply the repairs, ReAssert modifies the code automatically. Our experiments show that ReAssert can repair many common test failures and that its suggested repairs correspond to developers' expectations.
The conference will be held in Auckland, New Zealand. I am excited to travel overseas to present my work. Vilas, my coauthor, and Yun-Young, my officemate, are both from New Zealand and are eager to visit home.
Update September 8, 2009
I have posted the final version of the paper and updated the ReAssert homepage.
Update (November 30, 2009)
The conference presentation went very well, and I got a great deal of insightful questions and feedback from other attendees. Here are the presentation slides. I told the story of Alice the software developer like in the previous ReAssert post. The presentation starts with a picture of Alice adapted (as per Creative Commons) from xkcd #662.
I had originally planned to draw a picture in my normal cartoon style, but decided instead to use something simpler. The xkcd picture turned out to be a good choice; it made the audience laugh, and one attendee mentioned Scott McCloud's assertion from Understanding Comics that a simple face causes the audience to identify themselves in a character.