LASoT, which stands for Learning to assert in software testing using mutants, is the code name for my master thesis. I conducted an experiment base on two reporting tools for teaching software testing. One, Descartes, is a mutation engine plugin for PIT which implements extreme mutation and the other, Reneri, is a Maven plugin that generates hints to improve a test suite, by observing the execution of undetected extreme transformations discovered by Descartes in a Java project. The goal of this experiment is to evaluate at which extent the inclusion of Descartes and Reneri reports in an IDE plugin can help students to refine the assertions of their tests.

In this GitHub repository, you will find in the tarshes-descartes-reneri directory is a version of Reneri adapted by Pierre Luycx. You will also find 2048 directory is an adapted version of the famous game 2048 and is the project on which we'll apply the visual studio code lasot plugin. There are also several batch files that will help you to install everything.

• Install Visual Studio Code.
• Install JDK 11 or 17.
• Download this repository and extract.
• Execute install.bat file with admin rights.
• Reboot your computer.
• Execute start.bat file. Visual Studio Code will open with the 2048 project.

With the help off the LASoT plugin and the usage indications try to improve the tests suite based on the informations incorporated into the code about the survived mutations. This experiment consists also of a code reading exercice. You have to understand at a general level what the tested method do. These are implemented with commentaries.

Quick start :

• Try first to use the Wizard (Ctrl+Shift+P and type LASoT Wizard) and follow the steps.
• Then click on the status bar item which indicates the number of survived mutations. A dialog will show you which methods are partially or pseudo-tested.
• Navigate to these methods and hover the highlighted code to know more about the tests that fails to detect mutations.
• Navigate to these tests and hover the highlighted code to know more about the mutation and original code values.
• Improve the tests assertions to kill the undetected mutations. When you've change the tests suite, run it before starting the procedure.
• Start again all the steps above until there are no more survivors. It is not mandatory to use only the wizard. You can use the "LASoT Explorer" too.

When you have finished execute createReports.bat file. This will create the archive you'll need to upload in the experiment Google Form. Thank you to take time to fill in properly. At last execute the uninstall batch script.

Thank you!

Samuel Van de Put master's student, from the University of Namur in Belgium. I was under the supervision of Xavier Devroey and Benoît Vanderose.

The dataset is licensed under LGPL3. This repository contains adapted source codes of Reneri (LGPL3, Oscar Luis Vera Pérez) and an implementation of 2048 found on Rosetta Code (GFDL1.2, anonymous author).