A test-suite reduction approach to improving fault-localization effectiveness

• This paper proposes a novel test-suite reduction.
• This approach analysis concrete path information as well as test-suite coverage.
• This method removes test-suite which has little or no effect on fault-localization.
• This method improves the evenness of distribution of concrete execution paths.
• The reduced test-suite can improve fault-localization effectiveness.

In order to improve the effectiveness of fault localization, researchers are interested in test-suite reduction to provide suitable test-suite inputs. Different test-suite reduction approaches have been proposed. However, the results are usually not ideal. Reducing the test-suite improperly or excessively can even negatively affect fault-localization effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a two-step test-suite reduction approach to remove the test cases which have little or no effect on fault localization, and improve the distribution evenness of concrete execution paths of test cases. This approach consists of coverage matrix based reduction and path vector based reduction, so it analyzes not only the test cases coverage but also the concrete path information. We design and implement experiments to verify the effect of our approach. The experimental results show that our reduced test-suite can improve fault-localization effectiveness. On average, our approach can reduce the size of a test-suite in 47.87% (for Siemens programs) and 23.03% (for space program). At the same time, on average our approach can improve the fault-localization effectiveness, 2.12 on Siemens programs and 0.13 on space program by Tarantula approach.