Speaker: Hagai Cibulski

Title:
Accelerating Test Driven Development using Aggressive Test Selection
Techniques

 

Abstract:

Test Driven Development is a methodology based on short iterations in
which first test cases define new functions, and then code is added
to pass the tests.

The byproduct is a regression tests suite which the developer runs on
each iteration.

Running the entire test suite every time might not be cost effective,
while on the other hand delaying of running the tests delays the
detection of software bugs, thus making them more expensive to fix.

The challenge is to find the appropriate regression tests to run
after changing a specific block of code. We suggest a solution based
on pre-computing the correlation between code blocks and functional
tests, and using the data to provide developers early feedback about
suspected regressions caused by the edited block of code. Running
only the reported tests thus may shorten the bug detection cycle.

Past work on regression test selection focused on conservative
optimization of a separate testing phase.

We will present initial experiments with a more aggressive approach
to test selection which we believe to be more appropriate for the TDD
context.