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arXiv · 2407.13258

The role of slicing in test-driven development

Oscar Dieste·Ayse Tosun·Sira Vegas·Adrian Santos·Fernando Uyaguari·Jarno Kyykka·Natalia Juristo
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Abstract

Test-driven development (TDD) is a widely used agile practice. However, very little is known with certainty about TDD's underlying foundations, i.e., the way TDD works. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework for TDD, with the following characteristics: 1) Each TDD cycle represents a vertical slice of a (probably also small) user story, 2) vertical slices are captured using contracts, implicit in the developers' minds, and 3) the code created during a TDD cycle is a sliced-based specification of a code oracle, using the contracts as slicing pre/post-conditions. We have checked the connections among TDD, contracts, and slices using a controlled experiment conducted in the industry.

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Oscar Dieste, Ayse Tosun, Sira Vegas, Adrian Santos, Fernando Uyaguari, Jarno Kyykka, Natalia Juristo. 2024-07-18. The role of slicing in test-driven development. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.13258

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