Automated unit testing framework for complex C++ programs

Abstract

C++ is a very popular programming language. However, testing C++ programs is a challenging task due to the high complexity of C++ features (e.g., template, non-public member function, complex STL types, etc.), and there are almost no automated unit testing tool that handles such highly complex C++ features. I have developed CLEMENTINE, an automated unit testing tool for real-world C++ programs that handles complex C++ features. CLEMENTINE extends CITRUS by resolving three main limitations in CITRUS and supports more C++ features (e.g., testing non-public member function, handling global operator overloading, etc.). As a result, CLEMENTINE generates effective unit test cases for four real-world C++ programs that CITRUS fails to test. Moreover, the experiment results on eight real-world C++ open source programs show that CLEMENTINE could achieve 81.6% statement coverage (15.0%p higher than CITRUS), 60.1% branch coverage (8.9%p higher than CITRUS), and 88.5% function coverage (24.4%p higher than CITRUS) on average, proving that CLEMENTINE has better testing performance compared to CITRUS.