Conference talk
How Mutation Testing Got Practical

This talk was given at FOSDEM ‘24 in the ‘Testing and Continuous Delivery’ devroom. It is based on material from guest lectures on mutation testing.

Abstract

Automated testing is part of (almost) every piece of software. But how can you be sure that these automated tests sufficiently assess the functionality of your system? Do you know which parts of your application are adequately tested, and where the ‘blind spots’ may be? In this talk we will explore the concepts behind mutation testing, talk about the pitfalls that have been overcome in the last 40+ years and show how (and why) today is the time to start applying mutation testing in your projects.

Topics

• Why we need to understand our tests (and why code coverage is not sufficient)
• What mutation testing is (with practical examples)
• How mutation testing got to practical applicability (from infeasible at inception to good framework availability to start using it in your projects now)
• State-of-the-art improvements to make mutation testing even more awesome