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ICST 2022
Mon 4 - Fri 8 April 2022
Wed 6 Apr 2022 16:45 - 17:00 at Margaret Hamilton - ICST Empirical Study Chair(s): Mohammad Reza Mousavi

Context

Mutation testing is considered to be a powerful approach to assess and improve the quality of test suites. However, this technique is expensive mainly because some mutants are semantically equivalent to the original program; in general, equivalent mutants require manual revision to differentiate them from useful ones, which is known as the Equivalent Mutant Problem (EMP).

Objective

In the past, several authors have proposed different techniques to individually identify certain equivalent mutants, with notable advances in the last years. In our work, by contrast, we address the EMP from a global perspective. Namely, we wonder the extent to which equivalent mutants are connected (i.e., whether they share mutation operators and code areas) as well as the extent to which the knowledge of that connection can benefit the mutant selection process. Such a study could allow going beyond the implicit limit in the traditional individual detection of equivalent mutants.

Method

We use an evolutionary algorithm to select the mutants, an approach called Evolutionary Mutation Testing (EMT). We propose a new derived version, Equivalence-Aware EMT (EA-EMT), which penalizes the fitness of known equivalent mutants so that they do not transfer their features to the next generations of mutants.

Results

In our experiments applying EMT to well-known C++ programs, we found that (i) equivalent mutants often originate from other equivalent mutants (over 60% on average); (ii) EA-EMT’s approach of penalizing known equivalent mutants provides better results than the original EMT in most of the cases (notably, the more equivalent mutants are detected, the better); and (iii) we can combine EA-EMT with Trivial Compiler Equivalence as a way to automatically identify equivalent mutants in a real situation, reaching a more stable version of EMT.

Conclusions

This novel approach opens the way for improvement in other related areas that deal with equivalent versions.

Wed 6 Apr

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

16:45 - 18:00
ICST Empirical StudyJournal-First Papers / Research Papers at Margaret Hamilton
Chair(s): Mohammad Reza Mousavi King's College London
16:45
15m
Talk
An experimental and practical study on the equivalent mutant connection: An evolutionary approach
Journal-First Papers
Pedro Delgado-Pérez Universidad de Cádiz, Francisco Chicano University of Malaga
Link to publication DOI
17:00
15m
Talk
A Qualitative Study on the Sources, Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies of Flaky Tests
Research Papers
Sarra Habchi University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Guillaume Haben University of Luxembourg, Mike Papadakis University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Maxime Cordy University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Yves Le Traon University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Pre-print
17:15
15m
Talk
As Code Testing: Characterizing Test Quality in Open Source Ansible Development
Research Papers
Mohammed Mehedi Hasan Independent University, Akond Rahman Tennessee Tech University
Pre-print File Attached
17:30
15m
Talk
A Survey on How Test Flakiness Affects Developers and What Support They Need To Address It
Research Papers
Martin Gruber BMW Group, University of Passau, Gordon Fraser University of Passau
Pre-print
17:45
15m
Live Q&A
Discussion and Q&A
Research Papers