Published:
Springer International Publishing, 2022
Published in:
Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (2022), Seite 217-235
Language:
Not determined
DOI:
10.1007/978-3-030-99527-0_12
ISSN:
0302-9743;
1611-3349
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Regression testing is an important activity to check software changes by running the tests in a test suite to inform the developers whether the changes lead to test failures. Regression test prioritization (RTP) aims to inform the developers faster by ordering the test suite so that tests likely to fail are run earlier. Many RTP techniques have been proposed and are often compared with the random RTP baseline by sampling some of the <jats:italic>n</jats:italic>! different test-suite orders for a test suite with <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> tests. However, there is no theoretical analysis of random RTP. We present such an analysis, deriving probability mass functions and expected values for metrics and scenarios commonly used in RTP research. Using our analysis, we revisit some of the most highly cited RTP papers and find that some presented results may be due to insufficient sampling. Future RTP research can leverage our analysis and need not use random sampling but can use our simple formulas or algorithms to more precisely compare with random RTP.</jats:p>