The Reduction Process for Change Type Cases to Consider

Abstract

Pragmatic reuse tasks can be validated by a custom record-and-replay (R&R) technique that transforms automated test suites to focus on the reused code, reducing the need to develop test suites manually; this technique has previously been reified in the Skipper tool. In general, R&R test suites have been criticized as lacking maintainability when the source under test evolves, but the literature contains no empirical evidence on the merits or faults of R&R unit tests relative to alternatives. The associated paper “Maintaining Record-and-Replay Test Cases within Pragmatic Reuse Scenarios” reports on an empirical study with industrial developers that: (1) evaluates whether R&R unit tests within pragmatic reuse tasks are harder to maintain than ones written manually, and (2) investigates how developers would validate pragmatic reuse tasks in the absence of R&R tests. This technical report describes details of the process for reducing the number of cases to be considered to a manageable number.