In mutation testing we change some syntax in source code and check if test cases are able to find bugs. It is concerned with functional correctness of the standalone modules. Suppose you decide to overengineer a solution and add this method to the fakecattrapdoor. Mutation testing, which got its start back in the 1960s, injects faults into your code to see how well a battery of tests can detect the change. Each mutated version is called a mutant and tests detect and reject mutants by causing the behavior of the original version to differ from the mutant. On a very high level, it is the process of rewriting the source code in small ways in order to remove the redundancies in the source code. The motivation is predict where qa should spend more time testing looking for bugs. Mutation testing is related to modification a program in small ways. Mutation testing is used to design new software tests and evaluate the quality of existing software tests. Statement mutation developer cut and pastes a part of a code of which the outcome may be. It also helps in estimating or boosting the adequacy of test suites. Mutation testing is a structural testing technique, which uses the structure of the code to guide the testing process. Each mutated version is called a mutant and tests detect and reject mutants by causing the behavior. This video covers what is mutation testing and how we can use pit to get mutation coverage.
Thus, mutation testing is a way to measure the quality of test cases, and the actual testing of program units is an added benefit. The purpose of mutation testing is to find out efficiency and effectiveness of test cases. We cover the following aspects of mutation testing. This method helps to check the number of defects in an application under test. The literature on mutation testing has contributed a.
A fortran language system for mutationbased software testing, kim n. Schweiggert, using nonredundant mutation operators and test suite prioritization to achieve efficient and scalable mutation analysis, in proceedings of the international symposium on software reliability engineering issre, 2012. Since im currently writing about integration testing, im very much. Contribute to atodorovmutationtestingexample development by creating an account on github. Code changed in this way becomes a mutation, and the goal is to make sure that your suite of tests can kill the mutant by having one or more tests fail. The number of possible mutations to attain full coverage is not realistic to attain without automation. Most effective and recommended way of doing mutation testing is by using tools. In the example above, note failed failures22, errors1. In this, the fault is introduced in the program by creating the mutant of the actual program. In software engineering, mutation testing could be fundamentally categorized into 3 types statement mutation, decision mutation, and value mutation.
Sep 12, 2017 mutation testing is a fault simulation technique. Mutations examples mutation testing tools stuart anderson mutation testing c 2011. Ieee transactions on software engineering 1 an analysis and survey of the development of mutation testing yue jia student member, ieee, and mark harman member, ieee abstractmutation testing is a faultbased software testing technique that has been widely studied for over three decades. Mutation testing is a faultbased software testing technique introduced originally to assess quality of a suite of test cases with respect to their ability to detect faults in programs 5, 6. Ieee transactions on software engineering 1 an analysis and. A mutation testing framework, however, would quickly notice that the following would also pass. In other words the mutation testing criterion does not say that the set of test cases must be such that certain paths are executed instead it requires the set of test cases to be such that they can distinguish between the original program and its mutants. Source code operator black box testing software engineering conditional logical operator unit test. Pit is a state of the art mutation testing system, providing gold standard test coverage for java and the jvm.
And our aim is to determine whether our test suite is able to detect the injected bugs. Jun 03, 2019 in this post i will be looking at mutation testing. It focuses to help the tester develop effective tests or locate weaknesses in the test data used for the program. Journal of software testing, verification and reliability. The set of mutation operators depends on the language in which p is written. Mutation testing is able to effectively assess the adequacy and quality of a test set but it also has certain challenges as below. A good unit test suite typically detects the program mutations and fails automatically. Mutation testing is a type of software testing that is performed to design new software tests and also evaluate the quality of already existing software tests. As for oysters, the largest talks do not necessarily contain the prettiest pearls. Mutation testing oder wie gut sind meine tests wirklich. In mutation testing, bugs are intentionally inserted into the program and mutants are created. During this years edition, my revelation came from a 15 minutes talk by my friend alexandre victoor, who introduced me to the wonders of mutation testing. Introduction to mutation testing with stryker digio.
In traditional software testing, mutation testing is a wellestablished technique for quality evaluation of test suites, which analyzes to what extent a test suite detects the injected faults. Dec 17, 2018 mutation testing finds any instances where a test should be failing but it is not. A suite that only partially tests code can still execute all its branches examples. Mutation testing involves modifying a program in small ways. Apr 20, 2014 last week, i took some days off to attend devoxx france 2014 3rd edition. The original intention behind mutation testing was to expose and locate weaknesses in test cases. Jmute introduces mutations to java source code, runs junit tests and generates an html report. Mutation testing is a type of software testing that is performed to design new. Twelfth international conference on testing computer software, pages 99109, washington, dc. Alle meine unittests bestatigen mir, meine software funktioniert genau wie erhofft. White box testing in software engineering software.
Unit testing, a testing technique using which individual modules are tested to determine if there are any issues by the developer himself. Apr 16, 2020 mutation testing is a faultbased testing technique where variations of a software program are subjected to the test dataset. Mutation testing is a method of software testing in which program or source code is deliberately. The term mutation refers to the change in the program.
Application of this technique involves generation of a number of faulty versions of the program, so that each of them differs from the original one by. Mutation testing was introduced in 1970s in the field of software testing as a process of testing the test suites by intentionally seeding errors i. This isnt that kind of mutation we are talking about. On test automation an introduction to mutation testing and pit. Introduction to mutation testing oodlestechnologies. These, socalled mutations, are based on welldefined mutation operators that either mimic typical user mistakes such as using the wrong operator or variable name or force the creation of valuable tests such as driving. Subsumption alluses scores using mutation adequate test sets are, in general, higher than the mutation scores using alluses adequate test sets. Its fast, scalable and integrates with modern test and build tooling. Thus, in this example, the mutation adequacy score for the full suite is 0.
Technical report issetr9609, information and software systems engineering, george mason university. Thus, mutation testing is a way to measure the quality of test cases, and the actual testing of program units is an. Instead it takes the program and creates many mutants of it by making simple changes to the program. Mutation testing is a technique that focuses on measuring the adequacy of test data or test cases. Mutation testing is a type of software testing where we mutate change certain statements in the source code and check if the test cases are. A fortran language system for mutation based software testing, kim n. On its own, testdriven development is not enough for delivering lean code that. Mutation testing or mutation analysis or program mutation is used to design new software tests and evaluate the quality of existing software tests. Sep 19, 2018 this video covers what is mutation testing and how we can use pit to get mutation coverage. It is a type of white box testing which is mainly used for unit testing.
Mutation testing is a faultbased software testing technique that has been widely studied for over three decades and the literature generated around the topic has contributed approaches, tools, developments and empirical results for its implementation. So mutation testing is defined as using mutation analysis to design new software tests or to evaluate existing software tests. Faults or mutations are automatically seeded into your code, then your tests are run. Verification, validation and testing in software engineering. Learn an interesting testing technique called mutation testing. Mutation testing has a high computational cost of executing the enormous number of mutants against a test set.
Eric wong, the university of texas at dallas 44 empirical study. Mutation testing is a method of software testing in which program or source code is deliberately manipulated, followed by suite of testing against the mutated code. In general a mutation operator makes a small unit change in the program to produce a mutant. Mutation testing is used to design new software tests and evaluate the quality of existing. Mutation testing sometimes also called mutation analysis is a method of software testing, which involves modifying programs source code in small ways. Mutation score is the ratio of killed mutants to the total number of mutants and is a measure of this efficacy. In control flow based and data flow based testing the focus was on which paths to execute during testing.
Statement mutation developer cut and pastes a part of a code of which the outcome may be a removal of some lines. Mutation testing is a faultbased testing technique where variations of a software program are subjected to the test dataset. Why is mutation testing important in software engineering. The changes in mutant program are kept extremely small, so it does not affect the overall objective of the. On test automation an introduction to mutation testing. Mutation testing does not take a pathbased approach. This extremely oversimplified example would produce a 100% code coverage in terms of executed lines during the testing process. Mutation testing for android applications by lin deng a dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty of george mason university in partial ful. The mutations introduced to source code are designed to imitate common programming errors. Mutation testing is a technique by which test examples can be improved. One of the biggest faults of mutation testing is that is nearly impossible to maintain without an automation tool, as stated in the article. This is done to determine the effectiveness of the test set in isolating the deviations. Java mutantion testing for eclipse is a plugin for eclipse that enables mutation testing for java projects.
Mutation testing is not a testing strategy like control flow or data flow testing. What it is, as well as an example to show what it can do, limitations to consider and how it can be added to a javascript project using stryker. When software developers encounter surviving mutants, they. Here are some examples of mutation operators for imperative languages. These ambiguities might cause failures in the software if not fixed and can easily pass.
Mutation testing in software development tutorial testingbrain. For a program under test p, mutation testing prepares a set of mutants by applying mutation operators on the text of p. Thus, mutation analysis and testing can be applied to design models, specifications, databases, tests, xml, and other types of software artifacts, although program mutation is the most common. Mutant programs are the version of the actual program. Sep 27, 2018 mutation testing includes changing the code a small part at a time creating mutants, and running the unit tests suite repeatedly. Mutation testing is a structural testing approach used to check the efficiency or precision of a testing program. Nov 08, 2016 in mutation testing, bugs are intentionally inserted into the program and mutants are created. In software engineering, mutation testing could be fundamentally. Mutation testing is the process of iterating through each line of. Mutation testing is a structural testing method, i. The main aim is to isolate each unit of the system to identify, analyze and fix the defects. Mutation testing can be done manually by changing program code and running the tests, but this is not really effective and can lead to serious problems where you commit mutated code by mistake. However, due to the fundamental difference between traditional software and deep learningbased software, traditional mutation testing techniques.
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