Reducing Regression Test Size by Exclusion

Gallagher, Keith; Hall, Tracy; Black, Susan; Tahvildari, Ladan; Canfora, Gerardo

Abstract

Operational software is constantly evolving. Regression testing is used to identify the unintended consequences of evolutionary changes. As most changes affect only a small proportion of the system, the challenge is to ensure that the regression test set is both safe (all relevant tests are used) and unclusive (only relevant tests are used). Previous approaches to reducing test sets struggle to find safe and inclusive tests by looking only at the changed code. We use decomposition program slicing to safely reduce the size of regression test sets by identifying those parts of a system that could not have been affected by a change; this information will then direct the selection of regression tests by eliminating tests that are not relevant to the change. The technique properly accounts for additions and deletions of code. We extend and use Rothermel and Harrold’s framework for measuring the safety of regression test sets and introduce new safety and precision measures that do not require a priori knowledge of the exact number of modification-revealing tests. We then analytically evaluate and compare our techniques for producing reduced regression test sets.

Citation

Gallagher, K., Hall, T., Black, S., Tahvildari, L., & Canfora, G. (2007, October). Reducing Regression Test Size by Exclusion. Presented at 23rd International Conference on Software Maintenance, Paris, France

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: 23rd International Conference on Software Maintenance
• Start Date: Oct 2, 2007
• End Date: Oct 5, 2007
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Jul 26, 2007
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 26, 2010
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 154-163
• Book Title: IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, ICSM 2007, 2-5 October 2007, Paris ; proceedings.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/icsm.2007.4362628
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1679260
• Additional Information: Conference dates: 2 - 5 October 2007