Basile D., Ter Beek M. H., Cordy M., Legay A.
mutation security mutation-based testing real-time real-time systems Software product lines
Mutation testing can effectively drive test generation to reveal faults in software systems. However, it faces a typical efficiency issue as it can produce many mutants that are equivalent to the original system, making it impossible to generate test cases. We consider this problem when model-based mutation testing is applied to real-time system product lines, represented as timed automata. We define novel, time-specific mutation operators and formulate the equivalent mutant problem in the frame of timed refinement relations. Further, we study in which cases a mutation yields an equivalent mutant. Our theoretical results provide guidance to system engineers, allowing them to eliminate mutations from which no test case can be produced. Our evaluation, based on a proof-of-concept tool and an industrial case from the automotive domain, confirms the validity of our theory and demonstrates that our approach can eliminate many of the equivalent mutants (88% in our case study).
Source: Proceedings of the 24th International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC'20), pp. 252–262, Montréal, Québec, Canada, 19-23/10/2020
Publisher: ACM Press, New York, USA
@inproceedings{oai:it.cnr:prodotti:434236, title = {Tackling the Equivalent Mutant Problem in Real-Time Systems: The 12 Commandments of Model-Based Mutation Testing}, author = {Basile D. and Ter Beek M. H. and Cordy M. and Legay A.}, publisher = {ACM Press, New York, USA}, doi = {10.1145/3382025.3414966}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 24th International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC'20), pp. 252–262, Montréal, Québec, Canada, 19-23/10/2020}, year = {2020} }