English

LittleDarwin: a Feature-Rich and Extensible Mutation Testing Framework for Large and Complex Java Systems

Software Engineering 2017-07-06 v1

Abstract

Mutation testing is a well-studied method for increasing the quality of a test suite. We designed LittleDarwin as a mutation testing framework able to cope with large and complex Java software systems, while still being easily extensible with new experimental components. LittleDarwin addresses two existing problems in the domain of mutation testing: having a tool able to work within an industrial setting, and yet, be open to extension for cutting edge techniques provided by academia. LittleDarwin already offers higher-order mutation, null type mutants, mutant sampling, manual mutation, and mutant subsumption analysis. There is no tool today available with all these features that is able to work with typical industrial software systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.01123,
  title  = {LittleDarwin: a Feature-Rich and Extensible Mutation Testing Framework for Large and Complex Java Systems},
  author = {Ali Parsai and Alessandro Murgia and Serge Demeyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.01123},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Pre-proceedings of the 7th IPM International Conference on Fundamentals of Software Engineering

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:37:54.040Z