MSR 2025
Mon 28 - Tue 29 April 2025 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
co-located with ICSE 2025

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Mon 28 Apr 2025 16:50 - 16:55 at 214 - Software evolution and analysis

Software testing plays a crucial role in the contribution process of open-source projects. For example, contributions introducing new features are expected to include tests, and contributions with tests are more likely to be accepted. Although most real-world projects require contributors to write tests, the specific testing practices communicated to contributors remain unclear. In this paper, we present an empirical study to understand better how software testing is approached in contribution guidelines. We analyze the guidelines of 200 Python and JavaScript open-source software projects. We find that 78% of the projects include some form of test documentation for contributors. Test documentation is located in multiple sources, including CONTRIBUTING files (58%), external documentation (24%), and README files (8%). Furthermore, test documentation commonly explains how to run tests (83.5%), but less often provides guidance on how to write tests (37%). It frequently covers unit tests (71%), but rarely addresses integration (20.5%) and end-to-end tests (15.5%). Other key testing aspects are also less frequently discussed: test coverage (25.5%) and mocking (9.5%). We conclude by discussing implications and future research.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Mon 28 Apr

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

16:00 - 17:30
Software evolution and analysisData and Tool Showcase Track / Technical Papers / Industry Track at 214
16:00
10m
Talk
50 Years of Programming Language Evolution through the Software Heritage looking glass
Technical Papers
Adèle Desmazières Sorbonne Unversité, Roberto Di Cosmo Inria, France / University of Paris Diderot, France, Valentin Lorentz Inria Foundation
16:10
10m
Talk
It Works (only) on My Machine: A Study on Reproducibility Smells in Ansible Scripts
Technical Papers
Ghazal Sobhani Dalhousie University, Israat Haque Dalhousie University, Tushar Sharma Dalhousie University
Pre-print
16:20
10m
Talk
Are the Majority of Public Computational Notebooks Pathologically Non-Executable?
Technical Papers
Waris Gill Virginia Tech, Muhammad Ali Gulzar Virginia Tech, Tien Nguyen Virginia Tech
16:30
10m
Talk
Understanding Test Deletion in Java Applications
Technical Papers
Suraj Bhatta North Dakota State University, Frank Kendemah North Dakota State University, Ajay Jha North Dakota State University
Pre-print
16:40
10m
Talk
A Public Benchmark of REST APIs
Technical Papers
Alix Decrop University of Namur, Sara Eraso University of Valle, Xavier Devroey University of Namur, Gilles Perrouin Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS & University of Namur
Pre-print
16:50
5m
Talk
What Do Contribution Guidelines Say About Software Testing?
Technical Papers
Pre-print
16:55
5m
Talk
Measuring InnerSource Value
Industry Track
17:00
5m
Talk
CoUpJava: A Dataset of Code Upgrade Histories in Open-Source Java Repositories
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Kaihang Jiang University of Waterloo, Bihui Jin University of Waterloo, Pengyu Nie University of Waterloo
17:05
5m
Talk
EvoChain: A Framework for Tracking and Visualizing Smart Contract Evolution
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Ilham Qasse Reykjavik University, Mohammad Hamdaqa Polytechnique Montréal, Björn Þór Jónsson Reykjavik University
17:10
5m
Talk
CoDocBench: A Dataset for Code-Documentation Alignment in Software Maintenance
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Kunal Suresh Pai UC Davis, Prem Devanbu University of California at Davis, Toufique Ahmed IBM Research
17:15
5m
Talk
RefExpo: Unveiling Software Project Structures through Advanced Dependency Graph Extraction
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Vahid Haratian Bilkent Univeristy, Pouria Derakhshanfar JetBrains Research, Vladimir Kovalenko JetBrains Research, Eray Tüzün Bilkent University
17:20
5m
Talk
HyperAST: Incrementally Mining Large Source Code Repositories
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Quentin Le Dilavrec TU Delft, Netherlands, Andy Zaidman Delft University of Technology
Pre-print