Rowland Pitts: Quasi-Dominators and Random Selection in Mutation Testing

"Mutation Testing is a powerful approach to bug detecting and assessing code quality; however, software developers may be reluctant to embrace the technique due to the monstrous quantity of redundant mutants it generates. In spite of their large numbers, redundant mutants are relatively innocuous. Recent research indicates that redundant mutants affect a test engineer’s work effort only slightly, whereas equivalent mutants have a direct linear impact. Moreover, the time invested analyzing equivalent mutants produces no unit tests. Dominator mutants seek to address the redundancy problem, but they require the identification of all subsumption relationships, which consequently reveals all equivalent mutants. This paper introduces the notion of quasi-dominator mutants, which augment dominator mutants in significant numbers, enhancing their performance, and provides new insight into why random of mutant selection performs so well."
This talk was presented at the Second International Conference on Code Quality (ICCQ), a one-day computer science event organized in cooperation with the IEEE Russia Section C Chapter and focused on static analysis, program verification, bug detection, and software maintenance. More information about the event you can find on our website: www.iccq.ru/20...
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