To call, or not to call
Gregory Gay · 2018
While adequacy criteria offer an end-point for testing, they do not mandate how targets are covered. Branch Coverage may be attained through direct calls to methods, or through indirect calls between methods. Automated generation is biased towards the rapid gains offered by indirect coverage. Therefore, even with the same end-goal, humans and automation produce very different tests. Direct coverage may yield tests that are more understandable, and that detect faults missed by traditional approaches. However, the added burden for the generation framework may result in lower coverage and faults that emerge through method interactions may be missed.