Publication
Title
Mutation testing optimisations using the Clang front‐end
Author
Abstract
Mutation testing is the state‐of‐the‐art technique for assessing the fault detection capacity of a test suite. Unfortunately, a full mutation analysis is often prohibitively expensive. The CppCheck project for instance, demands a build time of 5.8 min and a test execution time of 17 s on our desktop computer. An unoptimised mutation analysis, for 55,000 generated mutants took 11.8 days in total, of which 4.3 days is spent on (re)compiling the project. In this paper, we present a feasibility study, investigating how a number of optimisation strategies can be implemented based on the Clang front‐end. These optimisation strategies allow to eliminate the compilation and execution overhead in order to support efficient mutation testing for the C language family. We provide a proof‐of‐concept tool that achieves a speedup of between 2 and 30. We make a detailed analysis of the speedup induced by the optimisations, elaborate on the lessons learned and point out avenues for further improvements.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Software: testing, verification and reliability. - Chichester
Publication
Chichester : 2024
ISSN
0960-0833
DOI
10.1002/STVR.1865
Volume/pages
34 :1 (2024) , p. 1-34
Article Reference
e1865
ISI
001085396000001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Mutation testing: fewer, smarter and faster.
Mutation testing: fewer, smarter and faster.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 02.11.2023
Last edited 04.11.2024
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