Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit
As quantum computing is still in its infancy, there is an inherent lack of knowledge and technology to test a quantum program properly. In the classical realm, mutation testing has been successfully used to evaluate how well a program's test suite detects seeded faults (i.e., mutants). In...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IEEE
2022-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9844849/ |
| _version_ | 1818056491746197504 |
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| author | Daniel Fortunato JOSE CAMPOS RUI ABREU |
| author_facet | Daniel Fortunato JOSE CAMPOS RUI ABREU |
| author_sort | Daniel Fortunato |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | As quantum computing is still in its infancy, there is an inherent lack of knowledge and technology to test a quantum program properly. In the classical realm, mutation testing has been successfully used to evaluate how well a program's test suite detects seeded faults (i.e., mutants). In this article, building on the definition of syntactically equivalent quantum operations, we propose a novel set of mutation operators to generate mutants based on qubit measurements and quantum gates. To ease the adoption of quantum mutation testing, we further propose QMutPy, an extension of the well-known and fully automated open-source mutation tool MutPy. To evaluate QMutPy's performance, we conducted a case study on 24 real quantum programs written in IBM's Qiskit library. Furthermore, we show how better test suite coverage and improvements to test assertions can increase the test suites' mutation score and quality. QMutPy has proven to be an effective quantum mutation tool, providing insight into the current state of quantum tests and how to improve them. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-10T12:29:41Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-65e78be622444266a6b2a33a1fd64390 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2689-1808 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-10T12:29:41Z |
| publishDate | 2022-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering |
| spelling | doaj.art-65e78be622444266a6b2a33a1fd643902022-12-22T01:48:51ZengIEEEIEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering2689-18082022-01-01311710.1109/TQE.2022.31950619844849Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With QiskitDaniel Fortunato0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2596-6859JOSE CAMPOS1RUI ABREU2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3734-3157Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, PortugalFaculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, PortugalFaculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, PortugalAs quantum computing is still in its infancy, there is an inherent lack of knowledge and technology to test a quantum program properly. In the classical realm, mutation testing has been successfully used to evaluate how well a program's test suite detects seeded faults (i.e., mutants). In this article, building on the definition of syntactically equivalent quantum operations, we propose a novel set of mutation operators to generate mutants based on qubit measurements and quantum gates. To ease the adoption of quantum mutation testing, we further propose QMutPy, an extension of the well-known and fully automated open-source mutation tool MutPy. To evaluate QMutPy's performance, we conducted a case study on 24 real quantum programs written in IBM's Qiskit library. Furthermore, we show how better test suite coverage and improvements to test assertions can increase the test suites' mutation score and quality. QMutPy has proven to be an effective quantum mutation tool, providing insight into the current state of quantum tests and how to improve them.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9844849/Quantum computingquantum mutation testingquantum software engineeringquantum software testing |
| spellingShingle | Daniel Fortunato JOSE CAMPOS RUI ABREU Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering Quantum computing quantum mutation testing quantum software engineering quantum software testing |
| title | Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit |
| title_full | Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit |
| title_fullStr | Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit |
| title_full_unstemmed | Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit |
| title_short | Mutation Testing of Quantum Programs: A Case Study With Qiskit |
| title_sort | mutation testing of quantum programs a case study with qiskit |
| topic | Quantum computing quantum mutation testing quantum software engineering quantum software testing |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9844849/ |
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