PLEDGE: a product line editor and test generation tool

in 17th International Software Product Line Conference co-located workshops, SPLC 2013 workshops, Tokyo, Japan - August 26 (2013)

Bypassing the Combinatorial Explosion: Using Similarity to Generate and Prioritize T-wise Test Suites for Large Software Product Lines

Report (2012)

Software Product Lines (SPLs) are families of products whose commonalities and variability can be captured by Feature Models (FMs). T-wise testing aims at finding errors triggered by all interactions ... [more ▼]

Software Product Lines (SPLs) are families of products whose commonalities and variability can be captured by Feature Models (FMs). T-wise testing aims at finding errors triggered by all interactions amongst t features, thus reducing drastically the number of products to test. T-wise testing approaches for SPLs are limited to small values of t -- which miss faulty interactions -- or limited by the size of the FM. Furthermore, they neither prioritize the products to test nor provide means to finely control the generation process. This paper offers (a) a search-based approach capable of generating products for large SPLs, forming a scalable and flexible alternative to current techniques and (b) prioritization algorithms for any set of products. Experiments conducted on 124 FMs (including large FMs such as the Linux kernel) demonstrate the feasibility and the practicality of our approach. [less ▲]

Mutation Based Test Case Generation via a Path Selection Strategy

in Information and Software Technology (2012), 54(9), 915-932

Context: Generally, mutation analysis has been identified as a powerful testing method. Researchers have shown that its use as a testing criterion exercises quite thoroughly the system under test while it ... [more ▼]

Context: Generally, mutation analysis has been identified as a powerful testing method. Researchers have shown that its use as a testing criterion exercises quite thoroughly the system under test while it achieves to reveal more faults than standard structural testing criteria. Despite its potential, mutation fails to be adopted in a widespread practical use and its popularity falls significantly short when compared with other structural methods. This can be attributed to the lack of thorough studies dealing with the practical problems introduced by mutation and the assessment of the effort needed when applying it. Such an incident, masks the real cost involved preventing the development of easy and effective to use strategies to circumvent this problem. Objective: In this paper, a path selection strategy for selecting test cases able to effectively kill mutants when performing weak mutation testing is presented and analysed. Method: The testing effort is highly correlated with the number of attempts the tester makes in order to generate adequate test cases. Therefore, a significant influence on the efficiency associated with a test case generation strategy greatly depends on the number of candidate paths selected in order to achieve a predefined coverage goal. The effort can thus be related to the number of infeasible paths encountered during the test case generation process. Results: An experiment, investigating well over 55 million of program paths is conducted based on a strategy that alleviates the effects of infeasible paths. Strategy details, along with a prototype implementation are reported and analysed through the experimental results obtained by its employment to a set of program units. Conclusion: The results obtained suggest that the strategy used can play an important role in making the mutation testing method more appealing and practical. [less ▲]