Context:

Mutation testing techniques, which attempt to construct a set of so-called mutants by seeding various faults into the software under test, have been widely used to generate test cases as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of a test suite. Its popularity in practice is significantly hindered by its high cost, majorly caused by the large number of mutants generated by the technique.

Objective:

It is always a challenging task to reduce the number of mutants while preserving the effectiveness of mutation testing. In this paper, we make use of an intelligent technique, namely spectral clustering, to improve the efficacy of mutant reduction.

Method:

First of all, we give a family of definitions and the method to calculate the distance between mutants according to the weak mutation testing criteria. Then we propose a mutant reduction method based on spectral clustering (SCMT), including the determination method of the number of clusters, spectral clustering of mutants, and selection of representative mutants.

Results:

The experimental studies based on 12 object programs show that the new approach can significantly reduce the number of mutants without jeopardizing the performance of mutation testing. As compared with other benchmark techniques, the new approach based on weak mutation testing criteria cannot only consistently deliver high effectiveness of mutation testing, but also help significantly reduce the time-cost of mutation testing.

Conclusion:

It is clearly demonstrated that the use of spectral clustering can help enhance the cost-effectiveness of mutation testing. The research reveals some potential research directions for not only mutation testing but also the broad area of software testing.

中文翻译：

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基于谱聚类的变异约简用于变异测试

内容：

变异测试技术试图通过将各种故障植入被测软件中来构建一组所谓的变异体，已被广泛用于生成测试用例以及评估测试套件的有效性。由于其高昂的成本，实际上阻碍了它的普及，这主要是由该技术产生的大量突变体引起的。

目的：

减少突变体的数量同时保持突变测试的有效性始终是一项艰巨的任务。在本文中，我们利用一种智能技术，即光谱聚类，来提高突变体还原的功效。

方法：

首先，我们给出了一系列定义和根据弱突变测试标准计算突变体之间距离的方法。然后，我们提出了一种基于谱聚类（SCMT）的突变体还原方法，包括聚类数的确定方法，突变体的谱聚类和代表性突变体的选择。

结果：

基于12个目标程序的实验研究表明，该新方法可以显着减少突变体的数量，而不会损害突变测试的性能。与其他基准技术相比，基于弱突变测试标准的新方法不仅能够始终如一地提供高效的突变测试，而且还有助于显着降低突变测试的时间成本。

结论：

清楚地表明，频谱聚类的使用可以帮助提高突变测试的成本效益。该研究揭示了一些潜在的研究方向，这些研究方向不仅适用于突变测试，而且适用于软件测试的广泛领域。