Before starting with mutant its recommended to understand the nomenclature.
To add mutant to your rspec code base you need to:
-
Add
mutant-rspec
as development dependency to yourGemfile
or.gemspec
This may look like:
# A gemfile gem 'mutant-rspec'
-
Run mutant against the rspec integration via the
--integration rspec
flag.
This uses mbj/auom a small library that has 100% mutation coverage. Its tests execute very fast and do not have any IO so its a good playground example to interact with.
All the setup described above is already done.
git clone https://github.com/mbj/auom
cd auom
bundle install # gemfile references mutant-rspec already
bundle exec mutant run --include lib --require auom --integration rspec -- 'AUOM*'
This prints a report like:
Mutant environment:
Usage: opensource
Matcher: #<Mutant::Matcher::Config subjects: [AUOM*]>
Integration: Mutant::Integration::Rspec
Jobs: 8
Includes: ["lib"]
Requires: ["auom"]
Subjects: 23
Mutations: 1003
Results: 1003
Kills: 1003
Alive: 0
Runtime: 51.52s
Killtime: 200.13s
Efficiency: 388.45%
Mutations/s: 19.47
Coverage: 100.00%
Now lets try adding some redundant (or unspecified) code:
patch -p1 <<'PATCH'
--- a/lib/auom/unit.rb
+++ b/lib/auom/unit.rb
@@ -170,7 +170,7 @@ module AUOM
# TODO: Move defaults coercions etc to .build method
#
def self.new(scalar, numerators = nil, denominators = nil)
- scalar = rational(scalar)
+ scalar = rational(scalar) if true
scalar, numerators = resolve([*numerators], scalar, :*)
scalar, denominators = resolve([*denominators], scalar, :/)
PATCH
Running mutant again prints the following:
evil:AUOM::Unit.new:/home/mrh-dev/example/auom/lib/auom/unit.rb:172:45e17
@@ -1,9 +1,7 @@
def self.new(scalar, numerators = nil, denominators = nil)
- if true
- scalar = rational(scalar)
- end
+ scalar = rational(scalar)
scalar, numerators = resolve([*numerators], scalar, :*)
scalar, denominators = resolve([*denominators], scalar, :/)
super(scalar, *[numerators, denominators].map(&:sort)).freeze
end
-----------------------
Mutant configuration:
Matcher: #<Mutant::Matcher::Config subjects: [AUOM*]>
Integration: Mutant::Integration::Rspec
Jobs: 8
Includes: ["lib"]
Requires: ["auom"]
Subjects: 23
Mutations: 1009
Results: 1009
Kills: 1008
Alive: 1
Runtime: 50.93s
Killtime: 190.09s
Efficiency: 388.45%
Mutations/s: 19.81
Coverage: 99.90%
This shows mutant detected the alive mutation. Which shows the conditional we deliberately added above is redundant.
Feel free to also remove some tests. Or do other modifications to either test or code.
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_ENV=test bundle exec mutant run -r ./config/environment --integration rspec User