Serge Demeyer | Publications | E-mail Feedback
Last updated on Friday, July 18, 2025
@article{Abdi2024jcl,
author = {Mehrdad Abdi and Henrique Rocha and Alexandre Bergel and
Serge Demeyer},
journal = {Journal of Computer Languages},
month = mar,
pages = {101255},
title = {A test amplification bot for {P}haro/{S}malltalk},
volume = {78},
year = {2024},
abstract = {Test amplification exploits the knowledge embedded in
an existing test suite to strengthen it. A typical
test amplification technique transforms the initial
tests into additional test methods that increase the
mutation coverage. Although past research
demonstrated the benefits, additional steps need to
be taken to incorporate test amplifiers in the
everyday workflow of developers. This paper describes
a proof-of-concept bot integrating Small-Amp with
GitHub-Actions. The bot decides for itself which
tests to amplify and does so within a limited time
budget. To integrate the bot into the GitHub-Actions
workflow, we incorporate three special-purpose
features: (i) prioritization (to fit the process
within a given time budget), (ii) sharding (to split
lengthy tests into smaller chunks), and (iii)
sandboxing (to make the amplifier crash-resilient).
We evaluate our approach by installing the
proof-of-concept extension of Small-Amp on five
open-source projects deployed on GitHub. Our results
show that a test amplification bot is feasible at a
project level by integrating it into the build
system. Moreover, we quantify the impact of
prioritization, sharding, and sandboxing so that
other test amplifiers may benefit from these
special-purpose features. Our proof-of-concept
demonstrates that the entry barrier for adopting test
amplification can be significantly lowered.},
annote = {internationaljournal},
doi = {10.1016/j.cola.2023.101255},
issn = {2590-1184},
}