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.