Verification-aided regression testing

Abstract

In this paper we present Verification-Aided Regression Testing (VART), a novel extension of regression testing that uses model checking to increase the fault revealing capability of existing test suites. The key idea in VART is to extend the use of test case executions from the conventional direct fault discovery to the generation of behavioral properties specific to the upgrade, by (i) automatically producing properties that are proved to hold for the base version of a program, (ii) automatically identifying and checking on the upgraded program only the properties that, according to the developers’ intention, must be preserved by the upgrade, and (iii) reporting the faults and the corresponding counter-examples that are not revealed by the regression tests. Our empirical study on both open source and industrial software systems shows that VART automatically produces properties that increase the effectiveness of testing by automatically detecting faults unnoticed by the existing regression test suites.