Related papers: Latent Mutants: A large-scale study on the Interpl…

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…

We study the competition between several advantageous mutants in an asexual population (clonal interference) as a function of the time between the appearance of the mutants, their selective advantages, and the rate of deleterious mutations.…

This paper describes Mull, an open-source tool for mutation testing based on the LLVM framework. Mull works with LLVM IR, a low-level intermediate representation, to perform mutations, and uses LLVM JIT for just-in-time compilation. This…

Deep Learning (DL) frameworks are a fundamental component of DL development. Therefore, the detection of DL framework defects is important and challenging. As one of the most widely adopted DL testing techniques, model mutation has recently…

Library dependencies in software ecosystems play a crucial role in the development of software. As newer releases of these libraries are published, developers may opt to pin their dependencies to a particular version. While pinning may have…

Code LLMs often portray inconsistent program behaviors. Developers typically employ benchmarks to assess Code LLMs, but most benchmarks are hand-crafted, static and do not target consistency property. In this work, we pose the scientific…

Previous evolutionary studies demonstrated how evaluating evolving agents in variable environmental conditions enable them to develop solutions that are robust to environmental variation. We demonstrate how the robustness of the agents can…

We present a theoretical as well as experimental investigation of a population of self-replicating segments of code subject to random mutation and survival of the fittest. Under the assumption that such a system constitutes a minimal system…

It is crucial that smart contracts are tested thoroughly due to their immutable nature. Even small bugs in smart contracts can lead to huge monetary losses. However, testing is not enough; it is also important to ensure the quality and…

Dynamically Adaptive Systems modify their behav- ior and structure in response to changes in their surrounding environment and according to an adaptation logic. Critical sys- tems increasingly incorporate dynamic adaptation capabilities;…

Mutation-based fuzzing is effective for uncovering compiler bugs, but designing high-quality mutators for modern languages with complex constructs (e.g., templates, macros) remains challenging. Existing methods rely heavily on manual design…

Existing fine-grained predictive mutation testing studies predominantly rely on deep learning, which faces two critical limitations in practice: (1) Exorbitant computational costs. The deep learning models adopted in these studies demand…

Mutation analysis evaluates test suites and testing techniques by measuring how well they detect seeded defects (mutants). Even though well established in research, mutation analysis is rarely used in practice due to scalability problems…

The environment in which a population evolves can have a crucial impact on selection. We study evolutionary dynamics in finite populations of fixed size in a changing environment. The population dynamics are driven by birth and death…

While Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in reasoning, whether they can sustain persistent latent states remains under-explored. The capacity to maintain and manipulate unexpressed, internal representations-analogous to human working…

Software bugs pose an ever-present concern for developers, and patching such bugs requires a considerable amount of costs through complex operations. In contrast, introducing bugs can be an effortless job, in that even a simple mutation can…

Software process models must change continuously in order to remain consistent over time with the reality they represent, as well as relevant to the task they are intended for. Performing these changes in a sound and disci- plined fashion…

Our study is focused on an evaluation of the maintainability characteristic in the context of the long-term evolution of open-source software. According to well established software quality models such as the ISO 9126 and the more recent…

Background: Open source software has an increasing importance in modern software development. However, there is also a growing concern on the sustainability of such projects, which are usually managed by a small number of developers,…

In verification-aware languages, such as Dafny, despite their critical role, specifications are as prone to error as implementations. Flaws in specifications can result in formally verified programs that deviate from the intended behavior.…