On the use of commit-relevant mutants

Abstract Applying mutation testing to test subtle program changes, such as patches or other small-scale code modifications, requires using mutants that capture the delta of altered behaviours. To address this issue, we introduce concept commit-relevant mutants, which are interact with behaviours system affected by a particular commit. Therefore, commit-aware testing, is assessment metric tailored specific By analysing 83 commits from 25 projects involving 2,253,610 in both C and Java, identify explore their relationship categories mutants. Our results show represent small subset all differs classes (subsuming hard-to-kill), score weakly correlated traditional (Kendall/Pearson 0.15-0.4). Moreover, analysis provides insights about commit, can be more efficient than classical analysis; our experiments, same number have better fault-revelation potential (30% higher chances revealing commit-introducing faults) We also illustrate possible application evaluate case prioritisation.