Mutation Testing

A Java mutation tool
Parasoft has a mutation testing tool, see Insure++ 4.0
- But look again, it's not really mutation
SourceFourge has a free mutation tool for Java, see Jester
- But look again, it's really a "jest" of mutation

Mothra

Mothra was developed in the mid 1980s at the Georgia Institute of Technology by members of the Department of Information and Computer Science and the Software Engineering Research Center. The Mothra project was funded by Rome Air Development Center and was directed by Dr. Richard DeMillo. The majority of the design was by Dr. DeMillo and Dr. Jeff Offutt as part of his PhD dissertation work. Various other students, faculty, and research staff worked on the project, including Dr. Kim King, Dr. Ed Krauser, Rhonda Martin, Mike McCracken, and Dr. Gene Spafford. After the primary implementation was completed in 1987, it was later extended and used by a number of researchers at Purdue, Clemson, Bellcore, and George Mason.

The software here has been modified by Offutt and his students. It is available for research and educational use only; nothing on this web site may be used any commercial or private profit. The files available here include the source and Sun executable for Mothra, most of which are stored in a tarred format. The primary file is Mothra.tar. The papers below is not a complete list of Mothra-related papers; I have merely listed most of mine.

Note: Please note that this software is quite old. Mothra was written in C and works on Fortran-77 programs. All software here is supplied as-is and no support is available (for example, the last time I tried to compile Mothra I was not successful).

Please read the DIRECTIONS for accessing and unpacking Mothra.
The README file contains the information here.
The primary tar file with source and a configuration installation script is Mothra.tar (4016 KB).
The tar file with executables compiled for Sun Solaris is MothraBin.tar (3600 KB).
kmothra is a menu interface that is simple and does not require an outdated version of X11.
Eq.tar is a set of fortran programs, with a list of mutants that have been identified to be equivalent.
mut_tools_gz.tex is an assignment I have given out in a graduate course. Includes a brief description of how to use the various tools directly (bypassing the interface).
equalizer.tar contains the source files for Equalizer, a program that determines some mutants to be equivalent. This was written by Jie Pan for her MS thesis. Should be placed in the main mothra tools directory ... uses Mothra's library.
There are more programs to use in src-equiv.tar.
bdemo is similar to kmothra, but written in the Bourne-shell.

Selected Papers

Mutation Testing implements Grammar- Based Testing, Jeff Offutt, Paul Ammann and Lisa (Ling) Liu. Second Workshop on Mutation Analysis (Mutation 2006), November 2006, Raleigh, NC. [Abstract] [PDF]
The Class-Level Mutants of MuJava, Jeff Offutt, Yu-SeungMa and Yong-Rae Kwon. Workshop on Automation of Software Test (AST 2006), pages 78-84, May 2006, Shanghai, China. [Abstract] [PDF]
Mutation 2000: Uniting the Orthogonal, Jeff Offutt and Roland Untch. Mutation 2000: Mutation Testing in the Twentieth and the Twenty First Centuries, 45-55, San Jose, CA, October 2000. [Abstract] [PDF]
Automatically Detecting Equivalent Mutants and Infeasible Paths, Jeff Offutt and Jie Pan. The Journal of Software Testing, Verification, and Reliability, Vol 7, No. 3, pages 165-192, September 1997. [Abstract] [PDF]
An Experimental Determination of Sufficient Mutant Operators, Jeff Offutt, Ammei Lee, Gregg Rothermel, Roland H. Untch, and Christian Zapf. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering Methodology, 5(2):99-118, April 1996. [Abstract] [PDF]
Mutation Operators for Ada, Jeff Offutt, Jeff Voas, and Jeff Payne. Technical Report ISSE-TR-96-09, Information and Software Systems Engineering, George Mason University. October 1996. [Abstract] [PDF]
Practical Mutation Testing, Jeff Offutt. Twelfth International Conference on Testing Computer Software, pages 99-109, Washington, DC, June 1995. [Abstract] [PDF]
Using Compiler Optimization Techniques to Detect Equivalent Mutants, Jeff Offutt and Mike Craft. The Journal of Software Testing, Verification, and Reliability, 4(3):131-154, September 1994. [Abstract] [PDF]
An Empirical Evaluation of Weak Mutation, Jeff Offutt and Stephen D. Lee. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 20(5):337-344, May 1994. [Abstract] [PDF]
Mutation Analysis Using Program Schemata, Roland Untch, Mary Jean Harrold, and Jeff Offutt. 1993 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, pages 139-148, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 1993. [Abstract] [PDF]
An Experimental Evaluation of Selective Mutation, Jeff Offutt, Gregg Rothermel, and Christian Zapf. Fifteenth International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 100-107, Baltimore, Maryland, May 1993. [Abstract] [PDF]
Mutation Testing of Software Using a MIMD Computer, Jeff Offutt, Roy Pargas, Scott Fichter, and P. Khambekar. 1992 International Conference on Parallel Processing, pages II-257-266, Chicago, Illinois, August 1992. [Abstract] [PDF]
Investigations of the Software Testing Coupling Effect, Jeff Offutt. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering Methodology, 1(1):3-18, January 1992. [Abstract] [PDF]
Constraint-Based Automatic Test Data Generation, Rich DeMillo and Jeff Offutt. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 17(9):900-910, September 1991. [Abstract] [PDF]
A Fortran Language System for Mutation-Based Software Testing, Kim N. King and Jeff Offutt. Software Practice and Experience, 21(7):686-718, July 1991. [Abstract] [PDF]
An Extended Overview of the Mothra Software Testing Environment, Rich DeMillo, Dany Guindi, Kim King, Mike M. McCracken, and Jeff Offutt. Second Workshop on Software Testing, Verification, and Analysis, pages 142-151, Banff, Canada, July 1988. [Abstract] [PDF]