Reference : On the use of commit-relevant mutants
Scientific journals : Article
Engineering, computing & technology : Computer science
http://hdl.handle.net/10993/53863
On the use of commit-relevant mutants
English
Ojdanic, Milos* mailto [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > SerVal >]
Ma, Wei* mailto []
Laurent, Thomas mailto []
Titcheu Chekam, Thierry mailto []
Ventresque, Anthony mailto []
Papadakis, Mike mailto [University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM) > Department of Computer Science (DCS) >]
* These authors have contributed equally to this work.
30-May-2022
Empirical Software Engineering
Kluwer Academic Publishers
27
Yes
1382-3256
1573-7616
Netherlands
[en] Mutation testing ; Change-relevant mutants ; Continuous integration ; Regression testing
[en] Applying mutation testing to test subtle program changes, such as program patches or other small-scale code modifications, requires using mutants that capture the delta of the altered behaviours. To address this issue, we introduce the concept of commit-relevant mutants, which are the mutants that interact with the behaviours of the system affected by a particular commit. Therefore, commit-aware mutation testing, is a test assessment metric tailored to a specific commit. By analysing 83 commits from 25 projects involving 2,253,610 mutants in both C and Java, we identify the commit-relevant mutants and explore their relationship with other categories of mutants. Our results show that commit-relevant mutants represent a small subset of all mutants, which differs from the other classes of mutants (subsuming and hard-to-kill), and that the commit-relevant mutation score is weakly correlated with the traditional mutation score (Kendall/Pearson 0.15-0.4). Moreover, commit-aware mutation analysis provides insights about the testing of a commit, which can be more efficient than the classical mutation analysis; in our experiments, by analysing the same number of mutants, commit-aware mutants have better fault-revelation potential (30% higher chances of revealing commit-introducing faults) than traditional mutants. We also illustrate a possible application of commit-aware mutation testing as a metric to evaluate test case prioritisation.
Researchers ; Professionals ; Students
http://hdl.handle.net/10993/53863
10.1007/s10664-022-10138-1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-022-10138-1
FnR ; FNR11686509 > Michail Papadakis > CODEMATES > Continuous Development With Mutation Analysis And Testing > 01/09/2018 > 31/08/2021 > 2017

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