DIRTS (Dependency Injection Aware Regression Test Selection)

DIRTS is a static class- or method-level Regression Test Selection (RTS) research tool that is aware of Dependency Injection (DI) mechanisms.

Prerequisites

• JDK >= 11
• Maven Surefire >= 2.14 (although recommended >= 3.0.0-M5)
• any version of JUnit

Maven Goals

Select Mojos

Mojo	Description
class_level_select	Select tests using the class-level approach
method_level_select	Select tests using the method-level approach

Graph Mojos

Mojo	Description
class_level_graph	Show graph created by the class-level approach
method_level_graph	Show graph created by the method-level approach

Utility Mojos

Mojo	Description
clean	Clean up temporary files and directories

Configuration Options

Relevant for every mojo

Option	Description	Default
logging	Logging level (values in java.util.logging.Level)	INFO
useSpringExtension	Analyze dependencies induced by Spring	false
useGuiceExtension	Analyze dependencies induced by Guice	false
useCDIExtension	Analyze dependencies induced by CDI	false

Relevant for select mojos

Option	Description	Default
standalone	Run in standalone mode - if not present, DIRTS expects that another RTS-tool has already excluded some tests in the excludesFile	false
overrideExtension	In combination with standalone=false, behave like tool is running standalone but only exclude tests affected by DI-related changes	false

Relevant for graph mojos

Option	Description	Default
toFile	Store graph representation on the filesystem instead of printing it to stdout	false
outputFile	The name of the file, where the graph is stored if toFile is set to true	[class|method]_level

Use cases

Standalone

DIRTS can be used completely standalone for RTS by specifying standalone=true.

As an extension to another RTS tool

DIRTS can also be used to run after another RTS tool and only correct for tests affected by DI-related changes. The other tool is required to exclude tests in the file specified by surefire's excludesFile property. DIRTS needs to run after the other RTS tool and will then comment out those tests that are affected by DI-related changes, but have been excluded before. This is the default behavior of DIRTS.

Usage examples

DIRTS is built to be used with Maven Surefire. The simplest way to use DIRTS in a Maven project is through the DIRTS Maven plugin:

<plugin>
    <groupId>edu.tum.sse.dirts</groupId>
    <artifactId>dirts-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${dirts.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        ...
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Prerequisites

1. Surefire's excludesFile-property needs to be set, ideally for every submodule separately. Otherwise, test exclusion will not function.
2. Analysis for the desired DI-frameworks should be enabled, by setting the respective property ( e.g. useSpringExtension) to true.

Compile, select and test in one go

Even though DIRTS analyzes plain source code, in case of certain inter-module dependencies, it may be required to compile before executing the selection procedure.

$ mvn compile dirts:class_level_select test

Select, then compile and test only those modules that have at least one test selected

DIRTS creates a list of these modules in .dirts/affected_modules inside the folder of the outermost module.

$ mvn dirts:class_level_select
$ mvn -am -pl "$(cat .dirts/affected_modules)" test

Combined with git - Test selection before merging

1. Checkout the main branch.
2. Run selection to create checksums and graph, if these files do not already exist. E.g.: $ mvn dirts:class_level_select
3. Checkout the feature branch.
4. Run selection and tests.

• For combined compilation, selection and test execution: $ mvn compile dirts:class_level_select test
• To only compile and test affected modules:

$ mvn dirts:class_level_select
$ mvn -am -pl "$(cat .dirts/affected_modules)" test

Setup

To build DIRTS simply run:

$ mvn clean install

This will build the code for all modules, run all tests, and install the JARs to your local Maven repository.