Test Case Generation and Execution based on Record-Replayer Mechanism

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel testing approach using deterministic replay. Deterministic replay is a technology that records nondeterministic events during a normal computer execution and deterministically replays the computer system’s execution along with the recorded events. We apply this deterministic replay technology to event-driven embedded system testing. The proposed approach works in three steps. First, we run an initial test using a sequence of “essential’’ events and obtain an event history that contains enough information needed for deterministic replay. Second, we create a number of variants of event history, i.e., test cases, by mutating the event history and/or adding more event records into the event history. Third, we execute the variants of event history emulating all recorded I/O events. This approach has two important advantages. It allows us to easily and efficiently generate a lot of effective test cases that can exhibit subtle bugs like races. It also provides an efficient means for automated test case execution since we do not need any arrangement of external entities like users and other systems.