Scope-aided test prioritization, selection and minimization for software reuse

Miranda B., Bertolino A.

In-scope entity  Out-of-scope entity  Test case selection  Test case prioritization  Test suite minimization  Test of reused code  Testing scope 

Software reuse can improve productivity, but does not exempt developers from the need to test the reused code into the new context. For this purpose, we propose here specific approaches to white-box test prioritization, selection and minimization that take into account the reuse context when reordering or selecting test cases, by leveraging possible constraints delimiting the new input domain scope. Our scope-aided testing approach aims at detecting those faults that under such constraints would be more likely triggered in the new reuse context, and is proposed as a boost to existing approaches. Our empirical evaluation shows that in test suite prioritization we can improve the average rate of faults detected when considering faults that are in scope, while remaining competitive considering all faults; in test case selection and minimization we can considerably reduce the test suite size, with small to no extra impact on fault detection effectiveness considering both in-scope and all faults. Indeed, in minimization, we improve the in-scope fault detection effectiveness in all cases.

Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2016