A Framework to Support Research in and Encourage Industrial Adoption of Regression Testing Techniques

When software developers make changes to a program, it is possible that they will introduce faults into previously working parts of the code. As software grows, a regression test suite is run to ensure that the old functionality still works as expected. Yet, as the number of test cases increases, it becomes more expensive to execute the test suite. Reduction and prioritization techniques enable developers to manage large and unwieldy test suites. However, practitioners and researchers do not always use and study these methods due, in part, to a lack of availability. In response to this issue, this paper describes an already released open-source framework that supports both research and practice in regression testing. The sharing of this framework will enable the replication of empirical studies in regression testing and encourage faster industrial adoption of these useful, yet rarely used, techniques.