iTree: Efficiently Discovering High-Coverage Configurations Using Interaction Trees

Modern software systems are increasingly configurable. While this has many benefits, it also makes some software engineering tasks, such as software testing, much harder. This is because, in theory, unique errors could be hiding in any configuration, and, therefore, every configuration may need to undergo expensive testing. As this is generally infeasible, developers need cost-effective technique for selecting which specific configurations they will test. One popular selection approach is combinatorial interaction testing (CIT), where the developer selects a strength $t$ and then computes a covering array (a set of configurations) in which all $t$-way combinations of configuration option settings appear at least once. In prior work, we demonstrated several limitations of the CIT approach. In particular, we found that a given system’s effective configuration space—the minimal set of configurations needed to achieve a specific goal—could comprise only a tiny subset of the system’s full configuration space. We also found that effective configuration space may not be well approximated by $t$-way covering arrays. Based on these insights we have developed an algorithm called interaction tree discovery (iTree). iTree is an iterative learning algorithm that efficiently searches for a small set of configurations that closely approximates a system’s effective configuration space. On the each iteration in iTree tests the system on a small sample of carefully chosen configurations, monitors the system’s behaviors, and then applies machine learning techniques to discover which combinations of option settings are potentially responsible for any newly observed behaviors. This information is used in the next iteration to pick a new sample of configurations that are likely to reveal further new behaviors. In prior work, we presented an initial version of iTree and performed an initial evaluation with promising results. This paper presents an improved iTree algorithm in greater detail. The key improvements are based on our use of composite proto-interactions a construct that improves iTree’s ability to correctly learn key configuration option combinations, which in turn significantly improves iTree’s running time, without sacrificing effectiveness. Finally, the paper presents a detailed evaluation of the improved iTree algorithm by comparing the coverage it achieves versus that of covering arrays and randomly generated configuration sets, including a significantly expanded scalability evaluation with the $sim$1M-LOC MySQL. Our results strongly suggest that the improved iTree algorithm is highly scalable and can identify a high-coverage test set of configurations more effectively than existing methods.