A Regression Test Case Prioritization Algorithm Based on Program Changes and Method Invocation Relationship

Abstract

Regression testing is essential for assuring the quality of a software product. Because rerunning all test cases in regression testing may be impractical under limited resources, test case prioritization is a feasible solution to optimize regression testing by reordering test cases for the current testing version. In this paper, we propose a new test case prioritization algorithm based on program changes and method (function) invocation relationship. Combining the estimated risk value of each program method (function) and the method (function) coverage information, the fault detection capability of each test case can be calculated. The algorithm reduces the prioritization problem to an integer linear programming (ILP) problem, and finally prioritizes test cases according to their fault detection capabilities. Experiments are conducted on 11 programs to validate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that our approach is more effective than some well studied test case prioritization techniques in terms of average percentage of fault detected (APFD) values.