Mutant reduction based on dominance relation for weak mutation testing

Gong, D.; Zhang, G.; Yao, X.; Meng, F.

Abstract

Context: As a fault-based testing technique, mutation testing is effective at evaluating the quality of existing test suites. However, a large number of mutants result in the high computational cost in mutation testing. As a result, mutant reduction is of great importance to improve the efficiency of mutation testing. Objective: We aim to reduce mutants for weak mutation testing based on the dominance relation between mutant branches. Method: In our method, a new program is formed by inserting mutant branches into the original program. By analyzing the dominance relation between mutant branches in the new program, the non-dominated one is obtained, and the mutant corresponding to the non-dominated mutant branch is the mutant after reduction. Results: The proposed method is applied to test ten benchmark programs and six classes from open-source projects. The experimental results show that our method reduces over 80% mutants on average, which greatly improves the efficiency of mutation testing. Conclusion: We conclude that dominance relation between mutant branches is very important and useful in reducing mutants for mutation testing.

Citation

Gong, D., Zhang, G., Yao, X., & Meng, F. (2017). Mutant reduction based on dominance relation for weak mutation testing. Information and Software Technology, 81, 82-96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2016.05.001

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 2, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 6, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: May 6, 2017
• Journal: Information and Software Technology
• Print ISSN: 0950-5849
• Electronic ISSN: 1873-6025
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 81
• Pages: 82-96
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2016.05.001
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1373425