Test input generation with Java PathFinder: then and now (invited talk abstract)

Abstract

The paper Test Input Generation With Java PathFinder was published in the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2004 Proceedings, and has now been selected to receive the ISSTA 2018 Retrospective Impact Paper Award. The paper described black-box and white-box techniques for the automated testing of software systems. These techniques were based on model checking and symbolic execution and incorporated in the Java PathFinder analysis tool. The main contribution of the paper was to describe how to perform efficient test input generation for code manipulating complex data that takes into account complex method preconditions and evaluate the techniques for generating high coverage tests. We review the original paper and we discuss the research that preceded it and the research that has happened between then (2004) and now (2018) in the context of the Java PathFinder tool, its symbolic execution component that is now called Symbolic PathFinder, and closely related approaches that target testing of software that manipulates complex data structures. We close with directions for future work.