Mutant reduction based on dominance relation for weak mutation testing

Gong, Dunwei, Zhang, Gongjie, Yao, Xiangjuan and Meng, Fanlin 2017. Mutant reduction based on dominance relation for weak mutation testing. Information and Software Technology 81 , pp. 82-96. 10.1016/j.infsof.2016.05.001

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Engineering
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0950-5849
Date of Acceptance:	2 May 2016
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2020 01:40
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/114983

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