Upgrade to PRO for Only $50/Year—Limited-Time Offer! 🔥
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Kill the mutants, test your tests
Search
Joy of Coding
May 29, 2015
Programming
0
97
Kill the mutants, test your tests
Joy of Coding
May 29, 2015
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Joy of Coding
See All by Joy of Coding
Cool Code - Kevlin Henney
joyofcoding
0
320
Chris Granger - PROGRAMMING AS DISTRIBUTED COGNITION: DEFINING A SUPER POWER
joyofcoding
0
230
Cristina Lopes - Exercises in Programming Style
joyofcoding
0
500
Laurent Bossavit - The Joy of Debugging Ourselves
joyofcoding
0
250
Let Me Graph That For You: An Introduction to Neo4j - Ian Robinson
joyofcoding
1
170
Who’s afraid of Object Algebras? - Tijs van der Storm
joyofcoding
0
890
The Scientific Programmer - Eric Bouwers
joyofcoding
0
210
Building a web app in an hour - Trisha Gee
joyofcoding
0
270
Accelerating Agile - Dan North
joyofcoding
0
200
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
0→1 フロントエンド開発 Tips🚀 #レバテックMeetup
bengo4com
0
370
Cap'n Webについて
yusukebe
0
150
Context is King? 〜Verifiability時代とコンテキスト設計 / Beyond "Context is King"
rkaga
10
1.4k
ゆくKotlin くるRust
exoego
1
160
tparseでgo testの出力を見やすくする
utgwkk
2
280
AI Agent Dojo #4: watsonx Orchestrate ADK体験
oniak3ibm
PRO
0
110
メルカリのリーダビリティチームが取り組む、AI時代のスケーラブルな品質文化
cloverrose
2
370
AI Agent Tool のためのバックエンドアーキテクチャを考える #encraft
izumin5210
4
1.2k
PC-6001でPSG曲を鳴らすまでを全部NetBSD上の Makefile に押し込んでみた / osc2025hiroshima
tsutsui
0
170
re:Invent 2025 のイケてるサービスを紹介する
maroon1st
0
150
モデル駆動設計をやってみようワークショップ開催報告(Modeling Forum2025) / model driven design workshop report
haru860
0
280
Canon EOS R50 V と R5 Mark II 購入でみえてきた最近のデジイチ VR180 事情、そして VR180 静止画に活路を見出すまで
karad
0
140
Featured
See All Featured
Sam Torres - BigQuery for SEOs
techseoconnect
PRO
0
140
Art, The Web, and Tiny UX
lynnandtonic
304
21k
Redefining SEO in the New Era of Traffic Generation
szymonslowik
1
170
Marketing to machines
jonoalderson
1
4.3k
Building Adaptive Systems
keathley
44
2.9k
Java REST API Framework Comparison - PWX 2021
mraible
34
9k
Marketing Yourself as an Engineer | Alaka | Gurzu
gurzu
0
90
Hiding What from Whom? A Critical Review of the History of Programming languages for Music
tomoyanonymous
0
300
Noah Learner - AI + Me: how we built a GSC Bulk Export data pipeline
techseoconnect
PRO
0
73
The Director’s Chair: Orchestrating AI for Truly Effective Learning
tmiket
0
63
Reality Check: Gamification 10 Years Later
codingconduct
0
1.9k
My Coaching Mixtape
mlcsv
0
13
Transcript
KILL THE MUTANTS a better way to test your tests
ABOUT ME • Roy van Rijn • Mutants: • Nora
• Lucas • Works for
SHOW OF HANDS let's do a
WHO DOES • Unit testing • Test-driven development (TDD) •
Continuous integration • Measure code coverage • Mutation testing
UNIT TESTING • Prove your code works • Instant regression
tests • Improve code design • Has become a mainstream practise over the last 10 years
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION • Automate testing • Maintain a single source
repository • Collect statistics
CODE COVERAGE • Measure the lines (or branches) that are
executed during testing
CODE COVERAGE • How did they test your car?
CODE COVERAGE • Who has seen (or written?) tests •
without verifications or assertions? • just to fake and boost coverage? • 100% branch coverage proves nothing
QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES? Who watches the watchmen?
MUTATION TESTING • Proposed by Richard J. Lipton in 1971
(winner of 2014 Knuth Prize) • A better way to measure the quality of your tests • Surge of interest in the 1980s • Time to revive this interest!
TERMINOLOGY: MUTATION • A mutation is a (small) change in
your codebase, for example:
TERMINOLOGY: MUTANT • A mutant is a mutated version of
your class
MUTATION TESTING • Generate (a lot of) mutants of your
codebase • Run (some of) your unit tests • Check the outcome!
OUTCOME #1: KILLED • A mutant is killed if a
test fails (detecting the mutated code) • This proves the mutated code is properly tested
OUTCOME #2: LIVED • A mutant didn’t trigger a failing
test…
OUTCOME #3: TIMED OUT • The mutant caused the program
loop, get stuck
OTHER OUTCOMES • NON-VIABLE • JVM could not load the
mutant bytecode • MEMORY ERROR • JVM ran out of memory during test • RUN ERROR • An error but none of the above.
FAULT INJECTION? • With fault injection you test code •
Inject faults/mutations and see how the system reacts • With mutation testing you test your tests • Inject faults/mutations and see how the tests react
TOOLING • µJava: http://cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/mujava/ (inactive) • Jester: http://jester.sourceforge.net/ (inactive) •
Jumble: http://jumble.sourceforge.net/ (inactive) • javaLanche: http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/mutation/ (inactive) • PIT: http://pitest.org/
USING PIT • PIT uses configurable ‘mutators' • ASM (bytecode
manipulation) is used to mutate your code • No mutated code is stored, it can't interfere with your code • Generates reports with test results
MUTATORS: CONDITION BOUNDARY > into >= < into <= >=
into > <= into <
MUTATORS: NEGATE CONDITIONALS == into != != into == <=
into > >= into < < into >= > into <=
MUTATORS: REMOVE CONDITIONALS into if(true) { //something } if(a ==
b) { //something }
MUTATORS: MATH + into - - into + * into
/ / into * % into * & into | << into >> >> into << >>> into <<< a++ into a-- a-- into a++
MUTATORS: MANY MORE • Replacing return values (return a; becomes
return 0;) • Removal of void invocations (doSomething(); is removed) • Some enabled by default, others are optional/configurable
MUTATION TESTING IS SLOW? • Speed was unacceptable in the
80's • Mutation testing is still CPU intensive • But PIT has a lot of methods to speed it up!
WHICH TESTS TO RUN? • PIT uses code coverage to
decide which tests to run: • A mutation is on a line covered by 3 tests? Only run those.
SIMPLE EXAMPLE • 100 classes • 10 unit tests per
class • 2 ms per unit test • Total time (all tests): 100 x 10 x 2ms = 2s
SIMPLE EXAMPLE • Total time (all tests): 100 x 10
x 2ms = 2s • 8 mutants per class, 100 classes x 8 = 800 mutants • Brute force: 800 x 2s = 26m40s • Smart testing: 800 x 10 x 2ms = 16s
LONGER EXAMPLE • Total time (all tests): 1000 x 10
x 2ms = 20s • 8 mutants per class, 1000 classes x 8 = 8000 mutants • Brute force: 8000 x 20s = 1d20h26m40s…!!! • Smart testing: 8000 x 10 x 2ms = 2m40s
PERFORMANCE TIPS • Write fast tests • Good separation or
concerns • Use small classes, keep amount of unit tests per class low
INCREMENTAL ANALYSIS • Experimental feature • Incremental analysis keeps track
of: • Changes in the codebase • Previous results
HOW ABOUT MOCKING? • PIT has support for: • Mockito,
EasyMock, JMock, PowerMock and JMockit
HOW TO USE PIT? • Standalone Java process • Build:
Ant task, Maven plugin • CI: Sonarqube plugin, Gradle plugin • IDE: Eclipse plugin (Pitclipse), IntelliJ Plugin
STANDALONE JAVA java -cp <your classpath including pit jar and
dependencies> org.pitest.mutationtest.commandline.MutationCoverageReport --reportDir /somePath/ --targetClasses com.your.package.tobemutated* --targetTests com.your.package.* --sourceDirs /sourcePath/
MAVEN PLUGIN Run as: mvn clean package org.pitest:pitest-maven:mutationCoverage <plugin> <groupId>org.pitest</groupId>
<artifactId>pitest-maven</artifactId> <version>1.0.0</version> <configuration> <targetClasses> <param>com.your.package.tobemutated*</param> </targetClasses> <jvmArgs>…</jvmArgs> </configuration> </plugin>
EXAMPLE Let’s kill some mutants… or be killed.
USE CASE The price of an item is 17 euro
If you buy 20 or more, all items cost 15 euro If you have a coupon, all items cost 15 euro
CODE public int getPrice(int amountOfThings, boolean coupon) { if (amountOfThings
>= 20 || coupon) { return amountOfThings * 15; } return amountOfThings * 17; }
TEST #1 @Test public void testNormalPricing() { //Not enough for
discount: int amount = 1; Assert.assertEquals(17, businessLogic.getPrice(amount, false)); }
BRANCH COVERAGE public int getPrice(int amountOfThings, boolean coupon) { if
(amountOfThings >= 20 || coupon) { return amountOfThings * 15; } return amountOfThings * 17; }
TEST #2 @Test public void testDiscountPricingByAmount() { //Enough for discount:
int amount = 100; Assert.assertEquals(1500, businessLogic.getPrice(amount, false)); }
BRANCH COVERAGE public int getPrice(int amountOfThings, boolean coupon) { if
(amountOfThings >= 20 || coupon) { return amountOfThings * 15; } return amountOfThings * 17; }
TEST #3 @Test public void testDiscountWithCoupon() { //Not enough for
discount, but coupon: int amount = 1; Assert.assertEquals(15, businessLogic.getPrice(amount, true)); }
BRANCH COVERAGE public int getPrice(int amountOfThings, boolean coupon) { if
(amountOfThings >= 20 || coupon) { return amountOfThings * 15; } return amountOfThings * 17; }
PIT RESULT
PIT RESULT > org.pitest.mutationtest…ConditionalsBoundaryMutator >> Generated 1 Killed 0 (0%)
> KILLED 0 SURVIVED 1 TIMED_OUT 0 NON_VIABLE 0 > MEMORY_ERROR 0 NOT_STARTED 0 STARTED 0 RUN_ERROR 0 > NO_COVERAGE 0 PIT tells us: Changing >= into > doesn’t trigger a failing test
TEST #4 @Test public void testDiscountAmountCornerCase() { //Just enough for
discount, mutation into > should fail this test int amount = 20; Assert.assertEquals(300, businessLogic.getPrice(amount, true)); }
BRANCH COVERAGE public int getPrice(int amountOfThings, boolean coupon) { if
(amountOfThings >= 20 || coupon) { return amountOfThings * 15; } return amountOfThings * 17; }
PIT RESULT
PIT RESULT > org.pitest.mutationtest…ConditionalsBoundaryMutator >> Generated 1 Killed 0 (0%)
> KILLED 0 SURVIVED 1 TIMED_OUT 0 NON_VIABLE 0 > MEMORY_ERROR 0 NOT_STARTED 0 STARTED 0 RUN_ERROR 0 > NO_COVERAGE 0 STILL WRONG!?
DID YOU SPOT THE BUG? @Test public void testDiscountAmountCornerCase() {
//Just enough for discount, mutation into > should fail this test int amount = 20; Assert.assertEquals(300, businessLogic.getPrice(amount, true)); }
SUMMARY • Mutation testing automatically tests your tests • Mutation
testing can find bugs in your tests • Code coverage is wrong, gives a false sense of security • Mutation testing with PIT is easy to implement
QUESTIONS?