CAREER: Advancing Regression Testing: Theory and Practice

尽管存在引入新错误的风险，软件项目仍会由于无休止的需求变化而不断发展。因此，软件开发人员实践回归测试——在每个项目修订中运行测试——以检查最近的项目更改没有破坏任何功能。虽然回归测试很重要，但由于大量的修订和测试，它的成本很高，而且据报道成本正在增加。有几种技术——测试选择、测试用例优先级、测试套件缩减和并行化——可以减少回归测试成本，但是它们的适用性和成本缩减取决于软件开发过程，也就是说，开发人员编写代码、构建项目和运行测试的方式。这些过程是不断发展的，有时会使现有的回归测试技术不适用或无效。PI确定了影响适用性和有效性的五个新兴趋势：使用多种编程语言、使用各种开发工具、使用基于云的持续集成服务、修订和测试数量的增加，以及非确定性代码的激增。为了显著减少回归测试的成本——执行时间、机器资源和由于检测错误的延迟而浪费的开发人员时间——PI提出了五项研究活动，包括设计和开发：(1)针对用多种编程语言编写的项目的回归测试技术，(2)消除由于保留行为的转换和不适当的代码结构而导致的不必要的低效率的回归测试技术，(3)降低云中测试成本的技术，(4)降低检测引入bug的修订成本的技术，以及(5)识别、调试和控制测试中的非确定性的技术。这个建议有可能大大降低软件测试的成本，这将减少由于软件错误造成的经济损失和人员伤亡。该项目将通过开发基于新开发思想的新课程来整合研究和教育，同时开发一种称为顶级教学的新概念，将软件工程材料插入到其他课程中，在这些课程中，主题和学生依赖于软件开发，需要了解良好的软件开发实践。

Software projects constantly evolve due to endless requirement changes despite the risk of introducing new bugs. Thus, software developers practice regression testing -- running tests at each project revision -- to check that recent project changes do not break any functionality. Although regression testing is important, it is costly due to the large number of revisions and tests, and the cost is reportedly increasing. Several techniques -- test selection, test-case prioritization, test-suite reduction, and parallelization -- can reduce regression testing cost, but their applicability and cost reduction depend on software development processes, i.e., the way developers write code, build the projects, and run tests. These processes are constantly evolving, sometimes making the existing regression-testing techniques inapplicable or ineffective. The PI identified five emerging trends that impact applicability and effectiveness: use of multiple programming languages, use of variousdevelopment tools, use of cloud-based continuous integration services, increase in the number of revisions and tests, and proliferation of non-deterministic code.To significantly reduce the regression testing costs -- execution time, machine resources, and wasted developers' time caused by delays in detecting bugs -- the PI proposes five research activities that include designing and developing: (1) regression-testing techniques for projects written in multiple programming languages, (2) regression-testing techniques that remove unnecessary inefficiency due to behavior-preserving transformations and inadequate code structure, (3) techniques to reduce the cost of testing in the cloud, (4) techniques to reduce the cost of detecting the bug-introducing revision, and (5) techniques to identify, debug, and control non-determinism in tests. This proposal has the potential to substantially reduce the cost of software testing, which will reduce financial losses and casualties due to software bugs. The project will integrate research and education by developing new curriculum based on newly developed ideas, along with the development of a new concept called top-teaching, which inserts Software Engineering materials into other courses, where the subject matter and students are dependent on software development and need to be informed about good software development practices.