mutation_testing

Mutation testing verifies test suite effectiveness by introducing small artificial bugs into production code and confirming existing tests fail, identifying code paths not adequately covered by assertions.

Test effectiveness analysis applies arithmetic, conditional, logical, and operator mutations to production code to ensure robust test coverage and pinpoint tests that provide coverage but do not catch critical changes.

You can identify weak tests by simulating common code changes through mutation testing, which checks whether your existing tests correctly recognize these mutations as failures and highlights inadequate assertions.

Run mutation analysis after writing new code and tests to simulate common code changes, confirming that your existing tests correctly identify these mutations as failures and catch bugs that could slip through undetected.

Yes, you can analyze code changes on the current branch to find any surviving mutants, verifying test effectiveness without requiring external dependencies or complex environment configurations.

High coverage does not guarantee effectiveness; mutation testing reveals this by introducing artificial bugs that survive your tests, pinpointing specific code paths where assertions are inadequate.