Mutation testing is a method of evaluating and improving the quality of our test suites. It introduces subtle bugs to source code of our projects and checks that our tests catch those synthetic faults. High computational cost of this technique have prevented it from being widely used in our standard programming toolchain.
Can we try to sneak it in through the backdoor of our continuous delivery pipelines? How much of it can we automate? How can our version control system help us in the process?
Let's try to answer those questions together.
Skills
Attendees should have written some tests in the past and realise that good tests are far trickier to write than it seems. I'll start from scratch and introduce all the concepts on the way. The talk does not require knowledge of any particular programming language.
Lernziele
An attendee of this session will:
* see how mutation testing can help her improve the quality of her tests,
* understand that mutation testing is computationally expensive,
* realise that a continuous delivery pipeline is a perfect fit for introducing mutation testing,
* be encouraged by the fact that a CD environment allows to introduce mutation testing in her organisation gradually.
// Referent
Jan Stepien
@janstepien
is a consultant at innoQ in Germany, where he works with people and computers. Among other projects, he introduced a continuous deployment pipeline at a growing German e-commerce startup. He graduated with an MSc in computer science from Warsaw University of Technology. He enjoys wandering in snowy Alpine wilderness and running around Munich.