Incremental Model-Based Testing of Delta-Oriented Software Product Lines

Software product line (SPL) engineering provides a promising approach for developing variant-rich software systems. But, testing of every product variant in isolation to ensure its correctness is in general not feasible due to the large number of product variants. Hence, a systematic approach that applies SPL reuse principles also to testing of SPLs in a safe and efficient way is essential. To address this issue, we propose a novel, model-based SPL testing framework that is based on a delta-oriented SPL test model and regression-based test artifact derivations. Test artifacts are incrementally constructed for every product variant by explicitly considering commonality and variability between two consecutive products under test. The resulting SPL testing process is proven to guarantee stable test coverage for every product variant and allows the derivation of redundancy-reduced, yet reliable retesting obligations. We compare our approach with an alternative SPL testing strategy by means of a case study from the automotive domain.