EvoDroid: segmented evolutionary testing of Android apps

Abstract

Proliferation of Android devices and apps has created a demand for applicable automated software testing techniques. Prior research has primarily focused on either unit or GUI testing of Android apps, but not their end-to-end system testing in a systematic manner. We present EvoDroid, an evolutionary approach for system testing of Android apps. EvoDroid overcomes a key shortcoming of using evolutionary techniques for system testing, i.e., the inability to pass on genetic makeup of good individuals in the search. To that end, EvoDroid combines two novel techniques: (1) an Android-specific program analysis technique that identifies the segments of the code amenable to be searched independently, and (2) an evolutionary algorithm that given information of such segments performs a step-wise search for test cases reaching deep into the code. Our experiments have corroborated EvoDroid’s ability to achieve significantly higher code coverage than existing Android testing tools.