Abstract
While many OO class features have been explored in detail, little work in the past has explored the characteristics of test classes. In this exploratory paper, we investigate traits of these classes which we believe demonstrate distinct differences between test classes and production classes. We explore differences between the number of clones, the number of comments and the maintainability of each class type. We believe that developers unjustifiably treat test classes as “second-class citizens” and we would therefore expect test classes to contain a) far more clones, b) a far lower (i.e., poorer) comment density and, c) worse maintainability levels. Six open-source systems were used as a basis of the work. Results showed that all three suppositions were indeed supported; this suggests the need to explore test classes in more detail and to remedy this clear problem that contributes to the level of technical debt.
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Counsell, S., Swift, S., Arzoky, M., Destefnas, G. (2020). On Clones and Comments in Production and Test Classes: An Empirical Study. In: Morisio, M., Torchiano, M., Jedlitschka, A. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12562. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64148-1_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64148-1_19
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