Automated code reviews via mutation testing - semantic code coverage (fork of the latest free version)
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Dan Kubb 63c586f6bb Change Mutant::Isolation.call to use block form of IO.pipe
* The block form automatically closes the reader and writer if they have
  not already been closed. This prevents resource leakage if the method
  exits due to an exception.
* Refactor specs to have common setup performed in a before block.
2015-07-23 13:45:43 -07:00
bin Reduce zombifier 2015-06-13 04:04:15 +00:00
config Fix --since to not match out of tree subjects 2015-07-21 21:04:12 +00:00
lib Change Mutant::Isolation.call to use block form of IO.pipe 2015-07-23 13:45:43 -07:00
meta Add mutation from #[] to #at #fetch 2015-07-05 16:07:03 +00:00
spec Change Mutant::Isolation.call to use block form of IO.pipe 2015-07-23 13:45:43 -07:00
test_app Add support for rspec-3.3 2015-06-13 04:00:20 +00:00
.gitignore Test both rspec 2 and 3 2014-03-03 20:00:57 +02:00
.rspec Use RSpec as receiver for rspec DSL methods 2014-08-10 21:04:07 +00:00
.rubocop.yml Fix style 2014-12-22 01:32:51 +00:00
.ruby-gemset Add mutant gemset configuration 2013-07-28 11:33:49 -07:00
Changelog.md Add --since CLI option for repository diff filter 2015-07-13 01:36:52 +00:00
circle.yml Bump to ruby 2.2 on CircleCI 2015-01-14 12:05:23 +00:00
Gemfile Remove Gemfile.devtools 2015-02-19 02:01:31 +00:00
Guardfile Include guardfile from morpher, compatible with latest guard-rspec 2014-01-18 23:53:07 +01:00
LICENSE Update copyright year 2014-02-02 22:59:57 +01:00
mutant-rspec.gemspec Remove support for rspec-3.{0,1} 2015-06-13 19:25:28 +00:00
mutant.gemspec Bump ruby requirement to 2.1 2015-05-31 21:20:54 +00:00
Rakefile Deactivate mutant self mutation on CI 2014-10-30 14:32:52 +00:00
README.md Simplify Rails setup instructions 2015-06-13 13:44:09 +01:00
TODO Remove completed TODO items 2014-12-06 03:40:33 +00:00

mutant

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Mutant is a mutation testing tool for Ruby.

The idea is that if code can be changed and your tests do not notice, either that code isn't being covered or it does not have a speced side effect.

Mutant supports ruby >= 2.1, while support for JRuby is planned. It should also work under any Ruby engine that supports POSIX-fork(2) semantics.

Mutant uses a pure Ruby parser and an unparser to do its magic.

Mutant does not have really good "getting started" documentation currently so please refer to presentations and blog posts below.

Mutation-Operators:

Mutant supports a wide range of mutation operators. An exhaustive list can be found in the mutant-meta. The mutant-meta is arranged to the AST-Node-Types of parser. Refer to parsers AST documentation in doubt.

There is no easy and universal way to count the number of mutation operators a tool supports.

Presentations

There are some presentations about mutant in the wild:

Blog-Posts

Installation

As mutant right now only supports rspec, install the gem mutant-rspec via your preferred method. It'll pull the mutant gem (in correct version), that contains the main engine.

gem install mutant-rspec

The minitest integration is still in the works.

The Crash / Stuck Problem (MRI)

Mutations generated by mutant can cause MRI to enter VM states its not prepared for. All MRI versions > 1.9 and < 2.2.1 are affected by this depending on your compiler flags, compiler version, and OS scheduling behavior.

This can have the following unintended effects:

  • MRI crashes with a segfault. Mutant kills each mutation in a dedicated fork to isolate the mutations side effects when this fork terminates abnormally (segfault) mutant counts the mutation as killed.

  • MRI crashes with a segfault and gets stuck when handling the segfault. Depending on the number of active kill jobs mutant might appear to continue normally until all workers are stuck into this state when it begins to hang. Currently mutant must assume that your test suite simply not terminated yet as from the outside (parent process) the difference between a long running test and a stuck MRI is not observable. Its planned to implement a timeout enforced from the parent process, but ideally MRI simply gets fixed.

References:

Examples

cd virtus
# Run mutant on virtus namespace
mutant --include lib --require virtus --use rspec Virtus*
# Run mutant on specific virtus class
mutant --include lib --require virtus --use rspec Virtus::Attribute
# Run mutant on specific virtus class method
mutant --include lib --require virtus --use rspec Virtus::Attribute.build
# Run mutant on specific virtus instance method
mutant --include lib --require virtus --use rspec Virtus::Attribute#type

Subjects

Mutant currently mutates code in instance and singleton methods. It is planned to support mutation of constant definitions and domain specific languages, DSL probably as plugins.

Test-Selection

Mutation testing is slow. The key to making it fast is selecting the correct set of tests to run. Mutant currently supports the following built-in strategy for selecting tests/specs:

Mutant uses the "longest rspec example group descriptions prefix match" to select the tests to run.

Example for a subject like Foo::Bar#baz it will run all example groups with description prefixes in Foo::Bar#baz, Foo::Bar and Foo. The order is important, so if mutant finds example groups in the current prefix level, these example groups must kill the mutation.

Rails

Assuming you are using rspec, you can mutation test Rails models by adding the following lines to your Gemfile:

group :test do
  gem 'mutant-rspec'
end

Next, run bundle and comment out require 'rspec/autorun' from your spec_helper.rb file. Having done so you should be able to use commands like the following:

RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec mutant -r ./config/environment --use rspec User

Support

I'm very happy to receive/answer feedback/questions and criticism.

Your options:

There is also the #mutant channel on freenode. As my OSS time budged is very limited I cannot join it often. Please prefer to use GitHub issues with a 'Question: ' prefix in title.

Credits

Contributing

  • Fork the project.
  • Make your feature addition or bug fix.
  • Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
  • Commit, do not mess with Rakefile or version (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
  • Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

License

See LICENSE file.