一句话：通过大规模实证研究揭示 Android 应用中测试替身的创建与使用方式、与 Java 测试替身的差异及潜在测试坏味。
Android 应用与环境交互频繁，测试常出现脆弱、缓慢和难调试问题，开发者常用测试替身（test doubles）在测试执行时替换应用或库类。但人们对其实际使用方式了解有限。本文进行深入实证研究：先分析 1,006 个含公开测试套件的应用，找出创建测试替身最常用的框架与方式；再选取使用这些框架定义测试替身最多的 10 个应用，分析 2,365 个测试替身（共替换 784 个类）。结果揭示了 Android 中测试替身的类型和使用模式，显示其与传统 Java 测试替身存在差异，并发现测试替身可能引入测试坏味甚至测试代码错误。论文最后讨论了这些发现对研究与实践的启示。
Android apps interact with their environment extensively, which can result in flaky, slow, or hard-to-debug tests. Developers often address these problems using test doubles---developer-defined objects that replace app or library classes during test execution. Although test doubles are widely used, there is limited understanding of how they are used in practice. To bridge this gap, we present an in-depth empirical study that aims to shed light on how developers create and use test doubles in Android apps. In our study, we first analyze a dataset of 1,006 apps with publicly available test suites to identify which frameworks and approaches developers most commonly use to create test doubles. We then investigate several research questions by studying how test doubles defined using these popular frameworks are created and used in the ten apps in the dataset that define the highest number of test doubles using these frameworks. Our results, based on the analysis of 2,365 test doubles that replace a total of 784 classes, provide insight into the types of test doubles used within Android apps and how they are utilized. Our results also show that test doubles used in Android apps and traditional Java test doubles differ in at least some respect. Finally, our results show that test doubles can introduce test smells and even mistakes in the test code. In the paper, we also discuss some implications of our findings that can help researchers and practitioners working in this area and guide future research.
@inproceedings{FazziniCCLKGO22,
title = {Use of test doubles in Android testing},
author = {Mattia Fazzini and Chase Choi and Juan Manuel Copia and Gabriel Lee and Yoshiki Kakehi and Alessandra Gorla and Alessandro Orso},
booktitle = {ICSE},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1145/3510003.3510175}
}