Focal methods for C/C++ via LLVM

Subtitle:steps towards faster mutation testing

Mutation testing is the state-of-the-art technique for assessing the fault detection capacity of a test suite. Unfortunately, it is seldom applied in practice because it is computationally expensive. In this paper we explore the use of fine-grained traceability links at the method level (named focal methods), to drastically reduce the execution time of mutation testing, by only executing the tests relevant to each mutant. In previous work for Java programs we achieve drastic speedups, in the range of 530x and more. In this paper we lay the foundation for identifying such focal methods under test in C/C++ programs by relying on the LLVM compiler infrastructure. A preliminary investigation on an 3,5 KLOC C++ project illustrates that we can correctly identify the focal method under test for 47 out of 61 tests.

Publication year:2021

Keywords:A2 Journal article

Accessibility:Open