The 10th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation (ICST 2017) was held on March 13 to 17, 2017, in Tokyo, Japan. The aim of the ICST conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners who study the theory, techniques, technologies, and applications that concern all aspects of software testing, verification, and validation of software systems.

In the main research program, the ICST 2017 program chairs, Ina Schieferdecker and Hironori Washizaki selected 36 full papers and 8 short papers for inclusion in the proceedings from among 135 submissions based on the recommendation of the program committee. All papers were refereed by at least three program committee members. Of the 36 full papers accepted, we selected seven papers for consideration for this special issue of STVR. These papers were extended from their conference version by the authors and were reviewed according to the standard STVR reviewing process. We thank all the ICST and STVR reviewers for their hard work. Three papers successfully completed the review process and are contained in this special issue. The rest of this editorial provides a brief overview of these three papers.

The first paper ‐ “Choosing The Fitness Function for the Job: Automated Generation of Test Suites that Detect Real Faults” by Alireza Salahirad, Hussein Almulla, and Gregory Gay ‐ studies the effectiveness of different fitness functions in search‐based unit test generation for detecting faults. Experiment results on real faults from the Defects4J database reveal that the branch coverage fitness function is the most effective. The study also reveals that the most important factor related to the likelihood of detection is the satisfaction of the chosen criterion's test obligations.

The second paper ‐ “Complexity Vulnerability Analysis using Symbolic Execution” ‐ Kasper Luckow, Rody Kersten, and Corina Pasareanu ‐ presents a symbolic execution technique for analyzing the worst‐case complexity of programs. The technique uses path policies to guide the symbolic execution towards worst‐case paths. The evaluation shows that the technique can detect complexity vulnerabilities in realistic software as well as standard implementations of classic algorithms.

The third paper ‐ “Model‐based Testing of Apache ZooKeeper: Fundamental API Usage and Watchers” by Cyrille Artho, Kazuaki Banzai, Quentin Gros, Guillaume Rousset, Lei Ma, Takashi Kitamura, Masami Hagiya, Yoshinori Tanabe, and Mitsuharu Yamamoto ‐ presents a model‐based testing technique to generate test cases for concurrent client sessions executing against ZooKeeper. The technique defines the semantics of watchers in ZooKeeper and the test oracle to handle the chain of events that eventually leads to the watcher being triggered. The evaluation shows that the technique can detect known defects as well as seeded mutations that implement possible flaws.

第十届软件测试，验证和确认国际会议（ICST 2017）于2017年3月13日至17日在日本东京举行。ICST会议的目的是召集研究与软件测试，验证和确认软件系统的各个方面有关的理论，技术，技术和应用程序的研究人员和从业人员。

在主要研究计划中，ICTE 2017计划主席Ina Schieferdecker和Hironori Washizaki根据计划委员会的建议，从135份意见书中选择了36篇全文和8篇短论文纳入会议论文集。所有论文均由至少三名程序委员会委员审阅。在接受的36篇论文中，我们选择了7篇论文作为STVR的特刊。这些论文由作者从会议版本扩展而来，并根据标准STVR审阅过程进行审阅。我们感谢所有ICST和STVR审稿人的辛勤工作。本特刊中包含三篇论文，这些论文成功完成了审阅过程。本文的其余部分简要介绍了这三篇论文。

Alireza Salahirad，Hussein Almulla和Gregory Gay的第一篇论文“选择适合工作的适应性功能：自动生成可检测实际故障的测试套件”研究了不同适应性功能在基于搜索的单元测试生成中的有效性故障。Defects4J数据库对实际故障的实验结果表明，分支覆盖适应度函数是最有效的。该研究还表明，与检测可能性相关的最重要因素是对所选标准测试义务的满意程度。

第二篇论文“使用符号执行的复杂性漏洞分析”-Kasper Luckow，Rody Kersten和Corina Pasareanu提出了一种符号执行技术，用于分析程序的最坏情况下的复杂性。该技术使用路径策略来指导符号执行朝最坏情况的路径发展。评估表明，该技术可以检测现实软件以及经典算法的标准实现中的复杂性漏洞。

Cyrille Artho，Kazuaki Banzai，Quentin Gros，Guillaume Rousset，Lei Ma，Takashi Kitamura，Masami Hagiya，Toshinori Tanabe和Yamamoto Mitsuharu发表了第三篇论文“ Apache ZooKeeper的基于模型的测试：API的基本用法和观察者”。基于模型的测试技术，以针对针对ZooKeeper执行的并发客户端会话生成测试案例。该技术在ZooKeeper和测试oracle中定义了监视程序的语义，以处理最终导致监视程序被触发的事件链。评估表明，该技术可以检测已知缺陷以及实现可能缺陷的种子突变。