ICST 2026
Mon 18 - Fri 22 May 2026 Daejeon, South Korea
Tue 19 May 2026 14:00 - 14:25 at Room 103 - Mutation & Constrained-Based Testing Chair(s): Nargiz Humbatova

Mutation analysis has been considered prohibitively expensive for large software projects due to its high computational cost. Even with efficient mutant schemata approaches, the evaluation of the constituent mutants still takes considerable time, and does not scale well as the size of the test suite and the number of mutations increases. Classical mutation analysis systems use processes to orchestrate the evaluation of individual mutants, which introduces large overheads. Our novel Dynamic Mutation Scheduling approach uses threads to evaluate mutant test cases, and further increases utilization of modern computer systems by running multiple, compatible mutations in parallel in the same process, scheduling in new mutations and their test cases as capacity becomes available. Mutations are compatible with regards to parallel evaluation if they appear in distinct parts of the program. Our approach both reduces the overheads of mutant test case evaluation, and increases the amount of parallelized work, resulting in reduced mutation evaluation runtimes. We implement our approach by extending mutest-rs, the state-of-the- art mutation analysis tool for the Rust programming language. We perform an extensive empirical evaluation (69,974 CPU minutes) of our novel Dynamic Mutation Scheduling approach on 25 top subject Rust programs totaling 773,655 SLoC, comparing it to a basic thread-based mutation evaluation approach, and to state-of-the-art Static Mutation Batching; a more simplified approach to parallel mutation evaluation. We find that Dynamic Mutation Scheduling effectively reduces wasted time and mutation evaluation runtimes over Static Mutation Batching, by up to 75.6%, while also reducing exhaustive mutation analysis runtimes, by up to 25.2%.

Tue 19 May

Displayed time zone: Seoul change

14:00 - 15:30
Mutation & Constrained-Based TestingResearch Papers / Industry at Room 103
Chair(s): Nargiz Humbatova Università della Svizzera italiana
14:00
25m
Talk
Dynamic Mutation Scheduling: Highly Parallel, Efficient Evaluation of Mutations for Rust Programs through Program SplittingArtifact ReviewedArtifact Available
Research Papers
Zalán Lévai University of Sheffield, Donghwan Shin University of Sheffield, Phil McMinn University of Sheffield
14:25
25m
Talk
How Effective are Coverage- and Diversity-Based Test Selection at Killing Stubborn Mutants?Artifact ReviewedArtifact Available
Research Papers
Islam Elgendy The University of Sheffield, Robert Hierons The University of Sheffield, Phil McMinn University of Sheffield
14:50
25m
Talk
Combining Input Constraints with Execution GoalsArtifact ReviewedArtifact Available
Research Papers
Leon Bettscheider CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Marius Smytzek CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Andreas Zeller CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Pre-print
15:15
15m
Talk
Industrial Application of Deep Learning based Fault Localization with Mutation Features
Industry
Heechan Yang KAIST, Ahcheong Lee KAIST, Kyutae Cho LIG Nex1, Yunsam Kim VPlusLab Inc.