trailofbits / trailofbits/necessist
Dry run all the test files together before initiating mutations
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- Rust
- Stars
- 145
- Forks
- 21
- Avg merge
- 10h 58m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 41
Description
Currently Necessist dry runs each test file and then starts mutating it line by line to find surviving mutations. The dry run of the next file required an additional build after reverting the last mutation of the earlier file. We can try to improve performance by dry running all the files together at the start, which will allow us to skip the build of the original code again and again with a dry run of every test file.
However, there is a challenge with this approach. The Necessist is built with two goals:
- Provide useful information when something fails.
- Be able to keep going when something fails.
Therefore to be able to find which test file had a failing test case will require parsing logic for test output for all supported frameworks. We are keeping this issue for future if we can find a better approach to handle this case.
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
No files, tests, or framework entry points are named. Start by tracing the current per-file dry-run and mutation flow, then assess how supported frameworks report failures; the work is done when all files can be dry-run together without losing failure attribution or the ability to continue after errors.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- testing
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100