Testing When Mobile Apps Go to Background and Come Back to Foreground

Abstract

Mobile applications have some specific characteristics not found on web and desktop applications. The mobile testing tools available may not be prepared to detect problems related to those specificities. So, it is important to assess the quality of the test cases generated/executed by mobile testing tools in order to check if they are able to find those specific problems. One way to assess the quality of a test suite is through mutation testing. This paper presents new mutation operators created to inject faults leading to known failures related to the non-preservation of users transient UI state when mobile applications go to background and then come back to foreground. A set of mutation operators is presented and the rational behind its construction is explained. A case study illustrates the approach to evaluate a mobile testing tool. In this study, the tool used is called iMPAcT tool, however any other mobile testing tool could be used. The experiments are performed over mobile applications publicly available on the Google Play store. The results are presented and discussed. Finally, some improvements are suggested for the iMPAcT tool in order to be able to generate test cases that can kill more mutants and so, hopefully, detect more failures in the future.