Toward Variability-Aware Testing

kaestner@cs.cmu.edu (C. Kästner, A. von Rhein, S. Erdweg, J. Pusch, S. Apel, T. Rendel, K. Ostermann)
Fri, 10 Jan 2025 13:48:21 GMT

Christian Kästner, Alexander von Rhein, Sebastian Erdweg, Jonas Pusch, Sven Apel, Tillmann Rendel, and Klaus Ostermann. Toward Variability-Aware Testing. In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development (FOSD), ISBN 978-1-4503-1309-4, pages 1--8, New York, NY: ACM Press, September 2012.

We investigate how to execute a unit test in all configurations of a product line without generating each product in isolation in a brute-force fashion. Learning from variability-aware analyses, we (a) design and implement a variability-aware interpreter and (b) reencode variability of the product line to simulate the test cases with a model checker. The interpreter internally reasons about variability, executing paths not affected by variability only once for the whole product line. The model checker achieves similar results by reusing powerful off-the-shelf analyses. We experimented with a prototype implementation for each strategy. We compare both strategies and discuss trade-offs and future directions.