Domain-RIP Analysis: A Technique for Analyzing Mutation Stubbornness

Existing mutation techniques generate vast numbers of equivalent and trivial mutants, which do not contribute on the improvement of test quality. One possible solution, as is proposed in this paper, is to measure the difficulty of killing a mutant and choose the stubborn (hard-to-kill) mutants in testing, which can be used to challenge the engineers to design new tests so to enhance the testing effectiveness. This paper introduces the domain-based reachability-infection-propagation analysis (D-RIP), a technique that can rank the mutants according to their difficulty of being revealed and present the reason for mutants being stubborn. More specifically, the D-RIP uses subdomain-based testing method and RIP analytical tool to measure the difficulty degree and decide whether a mutant is stubborn. Furthermore, it generates a report that displays the mutants that are hard-to-kill for a given testing method and presents the reasons to interpret why the test suites fail in detecting these mutants. Using this tool, the engineers are able to choose the useful mutants for improving test quality and obtain the guidance to design tests for detecting the stubborn mutants.