TestLoop: A Process Model Describing Human-in-the-Loop Software Test Suite Generation
Matthew C. Davis, Sangheon Choi, Amy Wei, Sam Estep, Brad A. Myers, Joshua Sunshine · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · 2025
There is substantial diversity among testing tools used by software engineers. For example, fuzzers may target crashes and security vulnerabilities while Test sUite Generators (TUGs) may create high-coverage test suites. In the research community, test generation tools are primarily evaluated using metrics like bugs identified or code coverage. However, achieving good values for these metrics does not necessarily imply that these tools help software engineers efficiently develop effective test suites. To understand the test suite generation process, we performed a secondary analysis of recordings from a previously-published user study in which 28 professional software engineers used two tools to generate test suites for three programs with each tool. From these 168 recordings ( \(28\ users\times 2\ tools\times 3\ programs/tool\) ), we extracted a process model of test suite generation called TestLoop that builds upon prior work and systematizes a user’s test suite generation process for a single function into seven steps. We then used TestLoop’s steps to describe 8 prior and 10 new recordings of users generating test suites using the Jest, Hypothesis, and NaNofuzz test generation tools. Our results showed that TestLoop can be used to help answer previously hard-to-answer questions about how users interact with test suite generation tools and to identify ways that tools might be improved.