MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases

[2304.07548] MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search Computer Science > Software Engineering arXiv:2304.07548 (cs) [Submitted on 15 Apr 2023 ( v1 ), last revised 11 Apr 2026 (this version, v5)] Title: MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases Authors: Congying Xu , Valerio Terragni , Hengcheng Zhu , Jiarong Wu , Shing-Chi Cheung View a PDF of the paper titled MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases, by Congying Xu and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Metamorphic Testing (MT) alleviates the oracle problem by defining oracles based on metamorphic relations (MRs), that govern multiple related inputs and their outputs. However, designing MRs is challenging, as it requires domain-specific knowledge. This hinders the widespread adoption of MT. We observe that developer-written test cases can embed domain knowledge that encodes MRs. Such encoded MRs could be synthesized for testing not only their original programs but also other programs that share similar functionalities. In this paper, we propose MR-Scout to automatically synthesize MRs from test cases in open-source software (OSS) projects. MR-Scout first discovers MR-encoded test cases (MTCs), and then synthesizes the encoded MRs into parameterized methods (called codified MRs), and filters out MRs that demonstrate poor quality for new test case generation. MR-Scout discovered over 11,000 MTCs from 701 OSS projects. Experimental results show that over 97% of codified MRs are of high quality for automated test case generation, demonstrating the practical applicability of MR-Scout. Furthermore, codified-MRs-based tests effectively enhance the test adequacy of programs with developer-written tests, leading to 13.52% and 9.42% increases in line coverage and mutation score, respectively. Our qualitative study shows that 55.76% to 76.92% of codified MRs are easily comprehensible for developers. Comments: accepted by TOSEM'24, and available at this https URL Subjects: Software Engineering (cs.SE) Cite as: arXiv:2304.07548 [cs.SE] (or arXiv:2304.07548v5 [cs.SE] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.07548 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Journal reference: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Volume 33, Issue 6, Article 150 (July 2024) Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.1145/3656340 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Congying Xu [ view email ] [v1] Sat, 15 Apr 2023 12:53:32 UTC (947 KB) [v2] Tue, 2 Apr 2024 10:20:03 UTC (2,750 KB) [v3] Mon, 8 Apr 2024 05:12:15 UTC (1 KB) (withdrawn) [v4] Tue, 25 Jun 2024 02:42:13 UTC (2,750 KB) [v5] Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:52:25 UTC (2,750 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases, by Congying Xu and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cs.SE < prev | next > new | recent | 2023-04 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... 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