Title: Live Visualization of GUI Application Code Coverage with GUITracer,
Abstract: The present paper introduces the initial implementation of a software
exploration tool targeting graphical user interface (GUI) driven applications.
GUITracer facilitates the comprehension of GUI-driven applications by starting
from their most conspicuous artefact - the user interface itself. The current
implementation of the tool can be used with any Java-based target application
that employs one of the AWT, Swing or SWT toolkits. The tool transparently
instruments the target application and provides real time information about the
GUI events fired. For each event, call relations within the application are
displayed at method, class or package level, together with detailed coverage
information. The tool facilitates feature location, program comprehension as
well as GUI test creation by revealing the link between the application's GUI
and its underlying code. As such, GUITracer is intended for software
practitioners developing or maintaining GUI-driven applications. We believe our
tool to be especially useful for entry-level practitioners as well as students
seeking to understand complex GUI-driven software systems. The present paper
details the rationale as well as the technical implementation of the tool. As a
proof-of-concept implementation, we also discuss further development that can
lead to our tool's integration into a software development workflow.