SHF: Small: Revisiting Assumptions of Regression Testing

回归测试很重要，因为它检查对软件的更改不会破坏先前的工作功能。然而，回归测试是昂贵的，因为它需要执行大量的测试并检查失败的运行。为了加速回归测试，研究人员提出了许多技术，包括测试选择（给定一组测试和软件更改，选择受更改影响的测试子集）和测试套件缩减（确定可以从测试套件中删除哪些测试，而不会大幅降低其故障检测能力）。虽然其中一些技术在实践中已经取得了成功，但是通过减少构建现有技术所依据的假设，还有很多机会进一步改进回归测试。具体来说，这个项目通过重新审视这六个假设来改进回归测试：(1)测试不是确定的（但取决于时间、环境或并发性），(2)代码历史不是线性的（但分支和合并的复杂图形），(3)测试选择不仅与大型项目相关（但开发人员甚至为小项目手动选择测试），(4)测试套件减少会降低一个版本中的故障检测能力（但在未来的版本中可能会减少更多），(5)测试不仅依赖于代码（但也依赖于非代码工件），并且(6)测试不仅依赖于手工编写的工件（也依赖于自动生成的工件）。改进回归测试的更广泛的影响是增加软件开发的速度和改进开发软件的质量。

Regression testing is important as it checks that changes to software do not break previously working functionality. However, regression testing is expensive as it requires executing a large number of tests and inspecting their failed runs. To speed up regression testing, researchers have proposed many techniques, including test selection (which, given a set of tests and software changes, selects a subset of tests that are affected by the changes) and test-suite reduction (which identifies what tests can be removed from a test suite without substantially reducing its fault-detection capability). While some of those techniques have been successful in practice, there is a lot of opportunity to further improve regression testing by alleviating the assumptions upon which the existing techniques are built.Specifically, this project improves regression testing by revisiting these six assumptions: (1) tests are not deterministic (but depend on timing, environment, or concurrency), (2) code histories are not linear (but convoluted graphs of branches and merges), (3) test selection is relevant not only for large projects (but developers manually select tests even for small projects), (4) test-suite reduction can decrease fault-detection capability in one version (but can decrease even more in future versions), (5) tests depend not only on code (but also on non-code artifacts), and (6) tests depend not only on manually written artifacts (but also on automatically generated artifacts). The broader impacts of improving regression testing are to increase the speed of software development and improve the quality of developed software.