A similarity-based approach for test case prioritization using historical failure data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Test case prioritization is a crucial element in software quality assurance in practice, specially, in the context of regression testing. Typically, test cases are prioritized in a way that they detect the potential faults earlier. The effectiveness of test cases, in terms of fault detection, is estimated using quality metrics, such as code coverage, size, and historical fault detection. Prior studies have shown that previously failing test cases are highly likely to fail again in the next releases, therefore, they are highly ranked, while prioritizing. However, in practice, a failing test case may not be exactly the same as a previously failed test case, but quite similar, e.g., when the new failing test is a slightly modified version of an old failing one to catch an undetected fault. In this paper, we define a class of metrics that estimate the test cases quality using their similarity to the previously failing test cases. We have conducted several experiments with five real world open source software systems, with real faults, to evaluate the effectiveness of these quality metrics. The results of our study show that our proposed similarity-based quality measure is significantly more effective for prioritizing test cases compared to existing test case quality measures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.050 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.015 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".