A refactoring-based approach for test case selection and prioritization

Abstract

Refactoring edits, commonly applied during software development, may introduce faults in a previously-stable code. Therefore, regression testing is usually applied to check whether the code maintains its previous behavior. In order to avoid rerunning the whole regression suite, test case prioritization techniques have been developed to order test cases for earlier achievement of a given goal, for instance, improving the rate of fault detection during regression testing execution. However, as current techniques are usually general purpose, they may not be effective for early detection of refactoring faults. In this paper, we propose a refactoring-based approach for selecting and prioritizing regression test cases, which specializes selection/prioritization tasks according to the type of edit made. The approach has been evaluated through a case study that compares it to well-known prioritization techniques by using a real open-source Java system. This case study indicates that the approach can be more suitable for early detection of refactoring faults when comparing to the other prioritization techniques.