trailofbits / trailofbits/necessist

Dry run all the test files together before initiating mutations

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#262 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement
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:

  1. Provide useful information when something fails.
  2. 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

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. 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

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