An effective fault aware test case prioritization by incorporating a fault localization technique

Abstract

Prior coverage-based test case prioritization techniques aim to increase fault detection rates by ordering the test cases according to some coverage criteria. However, in practice, since detected faults are typically removed, test cases that already covered the previously executed areas might not perform well as expected, irrespective of their coverage. In this case, the ordering of test cases based on coverage information might not be effective. In this paper, we introduce a new test case prioritization technique that considers both coverage and historical fault information by incorporating fault localization technique. Using the historical fault detection information of test cases, our approach adjusts the priorities of fault-found test cases while maintaining test cases with high coverage in high priority. Our approach can reduce the total cost of executing entire test suite(s) and enables to detect faults earlier in a testing process by improving the testing effectiveness compared to the prior coverage-based techniques.