Automated code-based test case reuse for software product line testing

Context: A software product line (SPL) grows in size as a new product is developed. A new product in an SPL should be tested extensively for quality assurance. For the efficient testing, previous studies suggested reusing the existing test cases of a product family. However, either their methods were not efficient because interventions from human experts, specifications, architecture and/or traceabilities for test cases were required. Objective: To address these limitations, we propose an Automated Code-based Test case reuse for SPLs (ActSPL). ActSPL automatically identifies reusable test cases for new products of a product family using source code and test cases. Method: ActSPL automatically constructs a hash-based traceability links between test cases and source code of a product family. Using the traceability links, ActSPL selects reusable test cases for a given new product from existing test cases of the product family. Results: We evaluated ActSPL in terms of the effectiveness and cost reduction of reusing test cases with five open source SPLs. The evaluation results showed that ActSPL, on average, achieved 100 % precision and 62 % recall. In addition, ActSPL, on average, saved 47.5 % of time required for testing a new product from scratch. Conclusion: Our study shows the feasibility of ActSPL reusing SPL test cases based on source code and test cases. Our results can be a basis for successive studies for automated code-based SPL testing.

Automated summary

This study proposes an automated code-based approach (ActSPL) for reusing SPL test cases by utilizing source code and test cases. The results show that ActSPL achieves high precision and recall, and significantly reduces the time required for testing a new product.