Test suite effectiveness metric evaluation: what do we know and what should we do?

TL;DR

This paper introduces a framework called ASSENT to evaluate and compare test suite effectiveness metrics accurately by establishing clear ground truths and benchmark test suites, revealing that mutation scores are most effective and that MTEs tend to overestimate effectiveness.

Contribution

The paper proposes the ASSENT framework for rigorous evaluation of test suite effectiveness metrics, addressing inconsistencies and clarifying the meaning of real faults.

Findings

Mutation score metrics are most aligned with real faults.

Using mutants overestimates effectiveness by more than 20%.

ASSENT enables accurate comparison of effectiveness metrics.

Abstract

Comparing test suite effectiveness metrics has always been a research hotspot. However, prior studies have different conclusions or even contradict each other for comparing different test suite effectiveness metrics. The problem we found most troubling to our community is that researchers tend to oversimplify the description of the ground truth they use. For example, a common expression is that "we studied the correlation between real faults and the metric to evaluate (MTE)". However, the meaning of "real faults" is not clear-cut. As a result, there is a need to scrutinize the meaning of "real faults". Without this, it will be half-knowledgeable with the conclusions. To tackle this challenge, we propose a framework ASSENT (evAluating teSt Suite EffectiveNess meTrics) to guide the follow-up research. In nature, ASSENT consists of three fundamental components: ground truth, benchmark test suites, and agreement indicator. First, materialize the ground truth for determining the real order in effectiveness among test suites. Second, generate a set of benchmark test suites and derive their ground truth order in effectiveness. Third, for the benchmark test suites, generate the MTE order in effectiveness by the metric to evaluate (MTE). Finally, calculate the agreement indicator between the two orders. Under ASSENT, we are able to compare the accuracy of different test suite effectiveness metrics. We apply ASSENT to evaluate representative test suite effectiveness metrics, including mutation score metrics and code coverage metrics. Our results show that, based on the real faults, mutation score and subsuming mutation score are the best metrics to quantify test suite effectiveness. Meanwhile, by using mutants instead of real faults, MTEs will be overestimated by more than 20% in values.