Improved Bug Reporting and Reproduction through Non-intrusive GUI Usage Monitoring and Automated Replaying

Most software systems are operated using a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Therefore, bugs are often triggered by user interaction with the software´s GUI. Hence, accurate and reliable GUI usage information is an important tool for bug fixing, as the reproduction of a bug is the first important step towards fixing it. To support bug reproduction, a generic, easy to integrate, non-intrusive GUI usage monitoring mechanism is introduced in this paper. As supplement for the monitoring, a method for automatically replaying the monitored usage logs is provided. The feasibility of both is demonstrated through proof-of-concept implementations. A case-study shows that the monitoring mechanism can be integrated into large-scale software products without significant effort and that the logs are replayable. Additionally, a usage-based end-to-end GUI testing approach is outlined, in which the monitoring and replaying play major roles.