A Joinpoint Coverage Measurement Tool for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Test Inputs for AspectJ Programs

Testing aspect-oriented programs is challenging in part because of the interactions between the aspects and the base classes with which the aspects are woven. Coverage metrics, such as joinpoint coverage, address faults resulting from the changes in base class control flow that may be introduced by the woven advices. Definitions of joinpoint coverage in the literature typically require counting the execution of aspects at each joinpoint. We present a tool for measuring joinpoint coverage from two perspectives: per advice, which measures the execution of the advice at each joinpoint it is woven into, and per class, which measures the execution of all the advices in each joinpoint in the class. This gives a more detailed measurement of joinpoint coverage and helps in identifying what more needs to be tested in both the base class and the aspect. The tool is based on AspectJ and Java bytecode, and thus, does not require any source code. We demonstrate the use of our tool to measure the joinpoint coverage of test inputs generated by Xie and Zhao´s Aspectra framework.