The 10 Minute Primer

The repository is divided into four folders:

artemis-code/
Source code, tests and scripts making up the core Artemis tool.
WebKit/
An instrumented version of WebKit.
ailproxy/
A web-proxy for mocking server-side interfaces.
docs/
Source files for the documentation you are reading.

Installation and Usage

For installation instructions see the INSTALL file and for usage run the command artemis --help.

The Artemis Tool

The Artemis tool is written in C++ using Qt 4.8 and the qmake build system. The main qmake project file is artemis-code/artemis-code.pro, which in turn includes artemis-code/artemis-core.pri (the latter is also included by the unit-test project).

The central classes are shown in the following diagram:

digraph overview { "Runtime" -> "WebKitExecutor"; "Runtime" -> "InputGeneratorStrategy"; "Runtime" -> "WorkList"; "InputGeneratorStrategy" -> "ExecutionResult"; "WebKitExecutor" -> "ExecutionResult"; "WebKitExecutor" -> "AppModel"; "WorkList" -> "PrioritizerStrategy"; "PrioritizerStrategy" -> "AppModel"; }

The main application loop and initialization of the application resides in Runtime (runtime/runtime.h). The main application loop maintains the WorkList (runtime/worklist/worklist.h), using an instance of InputGeneratorStrategy (strategies/inputgenerator/inputgeneratorstrategy.h) to generate new event sequences for the worklist. Event sequences are executed using an instance of WebKitExecutor (runtime/browser/webkitexecutor.h), responsible for all interaction with the instrumented WebKit library described in the next section. Finally, the WebKitExecutor gathers the feedback from WebKit in an ExecutionResult (runtime/browser/executionresult.h) and in updates to AppModel (model/appmodel.h), used by other parts of Artemis.

WebKit Instrumentation

We instrument WebKit (checkout anno 2011-12-28) to observe the execution of the tested application, gathering feedback for subsequent iterations.

The WebKit code-base is extended with a JavaScript debugger (WebKit/Source/WebCore/instrumentation/listenerdebugger.h) and a number of listening-points boxed in ifdef ARTEMIS and endif directives. The debugger and listening-points invoke methods on a global instance of QWebExecutionListener (/WebKit/Source/WebKit/qt/Api/qwebexecutionlistener.h), denoted the execution listener.

The execution listener provides a Qt signal interface used by Artemis for gathering feedback. In general, each method invocation from a listening-point is translated and emitted as a signal. Furthermore, the execution listener translates from the WebKit world into the Qt world, such as translating WebKit’s StringImpl class into Qt’s QString. As a rule, WebKit related types is not allowed in Artemis, and Qt related types is only allowed in the execution listener (and other Qt provided classes making up the WebKit-Qt interface).