Software Test

Treasure digging in software development history – Repository Mining In this research, we aim at supporting software comprehension. By analyzing and arranging software development history, we propose methods to present the corresponding data. Especially, we focus on software repository which is our major data source. Software Repository refers to a development infrastructure that allows developers to collaborate among others for software development via network. It is also a collective term of version control system that manages source code, as well as a mailing list management system that keeps track of discussions among developers.

What is Software Analytics Software analytics aims at helping individual or team to make better decision in software development. For this reason, software-related data such as source code or development history is analyzed. Afterwards, the corresponding result is provided in a way that can be shared among individual or team. Reference Work：Tim Menzies, Thomas Zimmermann. “Software Analytics: So What?”. In Journal IEEE Software archive Volume 30 Issue 4, July 2013 Pages 31-37.

Members of our laboratory attended the 48th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from April 12 to 18, 2026, and presented the following four papers at the co-located 22nd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2026). MSR is the premier conference in the field of mining software repositories. Kan Watanabe, Tatsuya Shirai, Yutaro Kashiwa, and Hajimu Iida, “What to Cut? Predicting Unnecessary Methods in Agentic Code Generation”, In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2026).

Tatsuya Shirai, Keitaro Ito, Ayane Shirakawa, and Kan Watanabe from our laboratory presented at the 32nd Workshop on Foundations of Software Engineering (FOSE2025), taken place in Ehime prefecture from November 6-8, 2025. Shirai presented “An Empirical Study on the Impact of Programming Languages in Fuzzing.” This research focused on fuzzing, an automated software testing technique, and conducted a large-scale analysis of how the characteristics of different programming languages affect fuzzing results.

Ibuki Nakamura from our laboratory presented the following paper at the 19th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2025). Ibuki Nakamura, Kosei Horikawa, Brittany Reid, Yutaro Kashiwa, and Hajimu Iida, “An Empirical Investigation into Maintenance of Load Testing Scripts”, In Proceedings of the 19th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2025) ESEM is a leading international conference for empirical software engineering and measurement, and this year marks its 19th edition as a premier venue in the field.

Ryoji Agatsuma and Ibuki Nakamura from our laboratory presented at the Foundation of Software Engineering 2024 (FOSE2024), taken place in Saga prefecture from November 28 to 30, 2024. Mr. Agatsuma presented “An Analysis of Software Quality Using Automated Driving Simulation Test Results.” This research analyzed the relationship between automated driving simulation test results and software quality metrics. The findings revealed that code groups associated with failed simulation tests tend to exhibit higher values of software quality metrics, including code smells and complexity measures.

Shun Fujita, Ibuki Nakamura, Tatsuya Shirai, and Riku Kato from our laboratory presented at the Software Engineering Symposium 2024 (SES 2024), held from September 17 to 19, 2024. Nakamura presented in the General Paper Track on the topic, “Towards an Empirical Investigation into Self-Admitted Technical Debt in Test Code”. His research focused on the distribution and types of SATD (Self-Admitted Technical Debt) in test code. He revealed that various types of SATD exist in test code, and certain SATD unique to test code that have not been covered in previous research were identified.

Ms.Watanabe and Mr.Fujita from SDlab presented at SIGSE and Mr.Kano and Mr.Horikawa from SDlab presented at SIGSS, both held on July 25th-27th, 2024 in Hokkaido. Ms. Watanabe presented her paper titled “Investigating the Impact of Shortening Release Cycle on Introduction and Resolution of Self-Admitted Technical Debt”. She discussed the impact of adopting shortened release cycles on SATD, focusing on Eclipse. The analysis revealed that adopting shortened release cycles does not

Shun Fujita, an internship student in our laboratory, presented his work at the 39th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution and Reengineering (ICSME 2023). ICSME is considered one of top conferences in the software maintenance research field. He presented the following paper: Shun Fujita, Yutaro Kashiwa, Bin Lin, and Hajimu Iida, “An Empirical Study on the Use of Snapshot Testing”, In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, pp.

Mr. Kosei Horikawa and Ms. Miku Watanabe, students in Nara National College of Technology and our collaborators (Internship students), presented their studies at the SIGSS workshop (non-peer-reviewed), held on March 14-15th, 2023 in Okinawa. Mr. Horikawa presented his paper titled “Toward Investigating the Impact of Refactoring on Test Execution Time”. This study explores the frequency, types of test code refactoring, and its impact on test execution time. Ms. Watanabe presented her paper titled “Toward Investigating the Impact of Adopting Rapid Release on Self-Admitted Technical Debt Introductions”.