Related papers: Predictive Mutation Analysis via Natural Language …

Context: Mutation Testing (MT) is an important tool in traditional Software Engineering (SE) white-box testing. It aims to artificially inject faults in a system to evaluate a test suite's capability to detect them, assuming that the test…

Predictive Mutation Testing (PMT) is a technique to predict whether a mutant will be killed by using machine learning approaches. Researchers have proposed various machine learning methods for PMT under the cross-project setting. However,…

Mutation testing is a powerful technique for assessing and improving test suite quality that artificially introduces bugs and checks whether the test suites catch them. However, it is also computationally expensive and thus does not scale…

Mutation analysis is a well-established technique for assessing test quality in the traditional software development paradigm by injecting artificial faults into programs. Its application to deep learning (DL) has expanded beyond classical…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in processing both natural and programming languages, which have enabled various applications in software engineering, such as requirement engineering, code generation, and…

We propose a new test case prioritization technique that combines both mutation-based and diversity-based approaches. Our diversity-aware mutation-based technique relies on the notion of mutant distinguishment, which aims to distinguish one…

We introduce $\mu$BERT, a mutation testing tool that uses a pre-trained language model (CodeBERT) to generate mutants. This is done by masking a token from the expression given as input and using CodeBERT to predict it. Thus, the mutants…

Mutation testing is an established fault-based testing technique. It operates by seeding faults into the programs under test and asking developers to write tests that reveal these faults. These tests have the potential to reveal a large…

Mutation testing is used extensively to support the experimentation of software engineering studies. Its application to real-world projects is possible thanks to modern tools that automate the whole mutation analysis process. However,…

LLM-based software engineering increasingly depends on executable, context-rich bug artifacts: paired correct and buggy code, methods under test (MUTs), documentation, and metadata. These artifacts support the training and evaluation of…

Mutation analysis has many applications, such as assessing the quality of test cases, fault localization, test input generation, security analysis, etc. Such applications involve running test suite against a large number of program mutants…

Mutation testing has been widely accepted as an approach to guide test case generation or to assess the effectiveness of test suites. Empirical studies have shown that mutants are representative of real faults; yet they also indicated a…

Mutation testing is an effective approach to evaluate and strengthen software test suites, but its adoption is currently limited by the mutants' execution computational cost. Several strategies have been proposed to reduce this cost (a.k.a.…

Mutant selection refers to the problem of choosing, among a large number of mutants, the (few) ones that should be used by the testers. In view of this, we investigate the problem of selecting the fault revealing mutants, i.e., the mutants…

Mutation testing is a widely recognized technique for assessing and enhancing the effectiveness of software test suites by introducing deliberate code mutations. However, its application often results in overly large test suites, as…

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…

Mutation analysis has many applications, such as asserting the quality of test suites and localizing faults. One important bottleneck of mutation analysis is scalability. The latest work explores the possibility of reducing the redundant…

Mutation analysis assesses a test suite's adequacy by measuring its ability to detect small artificial faults, systematically seeded into the tested program. Mutation analysis is considered one of the strongest test-adequacy criteria.…

Mutation testing research has indicated that a major part of its application cost is due to the large number of low utility mutants that it introduces. Although previous research has identified this issue, no previous study has proposed any…

LLM-based mutation testing is a promising testing technology, but existing approaches typically rely on a fixed set of mutations as few-shot examples or none at all. This can result in generic low-quality mutations, missed context-specific…