The major mutation framework: efficient and scalable mutation analysis for Java

Abstract

Mutation analysis seeds artificial faults (mutants) into a pro- gram and evaluates testing techniques by measuring how well they detect those mutants. Mutation analysis is well- established in software engineering research but hardly used in practice due to inherent scalability problems and the lack of proper tool support. In response to those challenges, this paper presents Major, a framework for mutation analysis and fault seeding. Major provides a compiler-integrated mu- tator and a mutation analyzer for JUnit tests. Major implements a large set of optimizations to enable efficient and scalable mutation analysis of large software sys- tems. It has already been applied to programs with more than 200,000 lines of code and 150,000 mutants. Moreover, Major features its own domain specific language and is de- signed to be highly configurable to support fundamental re- search in software engineering. Due to its efficiency and flexibility, the Major mutation framework is suitable for the application of mutation analysis in research and practice. It is publicly available at http://mutation-testing.org.