Causal Testing Artifact (ICSE 2020)

This is the artifact for the paper "Causal Testing: Understanding Defects' Root Causes". This artifact facilitates the use of Holmes for debugging defects and re-use of the implementation and/or artifacts in other research studies.

What is included in the artifact?

Our artifact includes the following:

1. Holmes, our prototype Causal Testing implementation.

2. A virtual machine that facilitates the use of Holmes, our Causal Testing prototype.

3. The supplemental data collection materials used when evaluating Holmes.

Where can I obtain the artifact components?

All the above listed artifacts, with the exception of the virtual machine file, are located in this repository.

Setting up the virtual machine

Copied from INSTALL.md

1. Download VirtualBox.
2. Download virtual machine file CausalTesting_Artifact.ova.
   Please note this is a large file (5BG) and may some time to download.
3. Open VirtualBox.
4. Go to File > Import Appliance...
5. Find and select the downloaded virtual machine file (CausalTesting_Artifact.ova). Click "Continue".
6. Leave all the settings as they are and click "Import".

Once the virtual machine is imported, it will appear in your VirtualBox Manager as CausalTesting_Artifact. You can now start the virtual machine by clicking the green "Start" arrow at the top of the VirtualBox Manager (see screenshot below).

Once the virtual machine loads, Eclipse will open -- this process may take a few minutes. Once Eclipse opens, there will be 7 projects in the Project Explorer labeled Defect 0- Defect 6.

At the bottom of the window, the Tasks View is open with a list of TODOs. Each TODO is attached to the failing test for each defect. For example, TODO: Test 00 (Training) is attached to the failing test test_toBoolean_String() which exposes Defect 0 in the toBoolean() method.

Running Holmes

To see Holmes output for each defect:

1. Double-click a TODO in the Tasks View to get to the failing test that exposes the defect. Each TODO is followed by comments that specify what we asked participants to do and the method to highlight for executing Holmes.

2. Highlight the method that takes the input being tested, as shown below.

3. Right-click the highlighted method and click "Run Holmes" in the pop-up menu.

Test 00 runs the test generation portion of Holmes (which does not include execution traces, as this was not automated in the user study version of Holmes). If you are running Holmes on Test 00, the editor will automatically go to the top of the file as Holmes generates and executes tests. This process will take a minute or two; eventually the Holmes View will open with results of the execution.

Test 01 - Test 06 show the pre-processed output that participants saw during the user study. If you are running Holmes on Test 01 - Test 06, after a few seconds, the Holmes View will open with the pre-processed results used in our user study. For each of these defects, the output includes the original failing test, generated passing tests, and generated faiing tests. You can access the execution trace for each test by clicking the "See Execution Trace" button under the test of interest.