Stryker
Professor X: For someone who hates mutants... you certainly keep some strange company.
William Stryker: Oh, they serve their purpose... as long as they can be controlled.
Introduction
For an introduction to mutation testing and Stryker's features, see stryker-mutator.io.
Getting started
Please follow the quickstart on the website.
For small js projects, you can try the following command:
npm install --save-dev @stryker-mutator/core
# Only for small projects:
npx stryker run
It will run stryker with default values:
- Uses
npm test
as your test command - Searches for files to mutate in the
lib
and src
directories
Usage
$ npx stryker <command> [options] [stryker.conf.js]
The main command
for Stryker is run
, which kicks off mutation testing.
Although Stryker can run without any configuration, it is recommended to configure it when you can, as it can greatly improve performance of the mutation testing process. By default, Stryker will look for a stryker.conf.js
file in the current working directory (if it exists). This can be overridden by specifying a different file as the last parameter.
Before your first run, we recommend you try the init
command, which helps you to set up this stryker.conf.js
file and install any missing packages needed for your specific configuration. We recommend you verify the contents of the configuration file after this initialization, to make sure everything is setup correctly. Of course, you can still make changes to it, before you run Stryker for the first time.
The following is an example stryker.conf.js
file. It specifies running mocha tests with the mocha test runner.
module.exports = function(config){
config.set({
mutate: [
'src/**/*.js',
'!src/index.js'
],
testFramework: 'mocha',
testRunner: 'mocha',
reporters: ['progress', 'clear-text', 'html'],
coverageAnalysis: 'perTest'
});
}
As you can see, the config file is not a simple JSON file. It should be a node module. You might recognize this way of working from the karma test runner.
Make sure you at least specify the testRunner
options when mixing the config file and/or command line options.
Command-line interface
Stryker can also be installed, configured and run using the Stryker-CLI. If you plan on using Stryker in more projects, the Stryker-CLI is the easiest way to install, configure and run Stryker for your project.
You can install the Stryker-CLI using:
$ npm install -g stryker-cli
The Stryker-CLI works by passing received commands to your local Stryker installation. If you don't have Stryker installed yet, the Stryker-CLI will help you with your Stryker installation. This method allows us to provide additional commands with updates of Stryker itself.
Supported mutators
See our website for the list of currently supported mutators.
Configuration
All configuration options can either be set via the command line or via the stryker.conf.js
config file.
files
and mutate
both support globbing expressions using node glob.
This is the same globbing format you might know from Grunt or Karma.
You can ignore files by adding an exclamation mark (!
) at the start of an expression.
Available Options
allowConsoleColors
[boolean
]
Default: true
Command line: --allowConsoleColors true
Config file: allowConsoleColors: true
The allowConsoleColors
value indicates whether Stryker should use colors in console.
coverageAnalysis
[string
]
Default: off
Command line: --coverageAnalysis perTest
Config file: coverageAnalysis: 'perTest'
With coverageAnalysis
you specify which coverage analysis strategy you want to use.
Stryker can analyse code coverage results. This can potentially speed up mutation testing a lot, as only the tests covering a
particular mutation are tested for each mutant.
This does not influence the resulting mutation testing score. It only improves performance.
The possible values are:
-
off: Stryker will not determine the code covered by tests during the initial test run phase. All tests will be executed for each mutant
during the mutation testing phase.
-
all: Stryker will determine the code covered by all tests during the initial test run phase. Only mutants actually covered by your
test suite are tested during the mutation testing phase. This setting requires your test runner to be able to report the code coverage back to Stryker.
Currently, only the stryker-mocha-runner
and the stryker-karma-runner
do this.
-
perTest: Stryker will determine the code covered by your test per executed test during the initial test run phase. Only mutants actually covered by your
test suite are tested during the mutation testing phase.
Only the tests that cover a particular mutant are tested for each one. This requires your tests to be able to run independently of each other and in random order.
In addition to requiring your test runner to be able to report the code coverage back to Stryker, your chosen testFramework
also needs to support running code
before and after each test, as well as test filtering.
Currently, stryker-mocha-runner
as well as stryker-karma-runner
support this. However, stryker-karma-runner
support is limited to using it with Jasmine
as the test framework
(Mocha
is not yet supported).
dashboard
[DashboardOptions
]
Default: { baseUrl: 'https://dashboard.stryker-mutator.io/api/reports', reportType: 'mutationScore' }
Command line: --dashboard.project github.com/my-org/my-project --dashboard.version branch-or-tag --dashboard.module my-module --dashboard.baseUrl https://dashboard.stryker-mutator.io/api/reports --dashboard.reportType full
Config file: { project: 'github.com/my-org/my-project', version: 'branch-or-tag', module: 'my-module', baseUrl: 'https://dashboard.stryker-mutator.io/api/reports', reportType: 'full' }
Settings for the dashboard
reporter. See the stryker handbook for more info
fileLogLevel
[string
]
Default: off
Command line: --fileLogLevel info
Config file: fileLogLevel: 'info'
Set the log level that Stryker uses to write to the "stryker.log" file. Possible values: off
, fatal
, error
, warn
, info
, debug
and trace
files
[string[]
]
Default: result of git ls-files --others --exclude-standard --cached --exclude .stryker-tmp
Command line: [--files|-f] src/**/*.js,a.js,test/**/*.js
Config file: files: ['src/**/*.js', '!src/**/index.js', 'test/**/*.js']
With files
, you can choose which files should be included in your test runner sandbox.
This is normally not needed as it defaults to all files not ignored by git.
Try it out yourself with this command: git ls-files --others --exclude-standard --cached --exclude .stryker-tmp
.
If you do need to override files
(for example: when your project does not live in a git repository),
you can override the files here.
When using the command line, the list can only contain a comma separated list of globbing expressions.
When using the config file you can provide an array with string
s
You can ignore files by adding an exclamation mark (!
) at the start of an expression.
logLevel
[string
]
Default: info
Command line: --logLevel info
Config file: logLevel: 'info'
Set the log level that Stryker uses to write to the console. Possible values: off
, fatal
, error
, warn
, info
, debug
and trace
Note: Test runners are run as child processes of the Stryker Node process. All output (stdout) of the testRunner
is logged as trace
.
Thus, to see logging output from the test runner set the logLevel
to all
or trace
.
maxConcurrentTestRunners
[number
]
Default: (number of CPU Cores)
Command line: --maxConcurrentTestRunners 3
Config file: maxConcurrentTestRunners: 3
Specifies the maximum number of concurrent test runners to spawn.
Mutation testing is time consuming. By default, Stryker tries to make the most of your CPU, by spawning as many test runners as you have CPU cores.
This setting allows you to override this default behavior.
Reasons you might want to lower this setting:
- Your test runner starts a browser (another CPU-intensive process)
- You're running on a shared server and/or
- Your hard disk cannot handle the I/O of all test runners
mutate
[string[]
]
Default: ['{src,lib}/**/*.js?(x)', '!{src,lib}/**/__tests__/**/*.js?(x)', '!{src,lib}/**/?(*.)+(spec|test).js?(x)', '!{src,lib}/**/*+(Spec|Test).js?(x)']
Command line: [--mutate|-m] src/**/*.js,a.js
Config file: mutate: ['src/**/*.js', 'a.js']
With mutate
you configure the subset of files to use for mutation testing.
Generally speaking, these should be your own source files.
This is optional, as you can choose to not mutate any files at all and perform a dry-run (running only your tests without mutating).
mutator
[object
| string
]
Default: javascript
Command line: --mutator javascript
Config file: mutator: 'javascript'
or mutator: { name: 'javascript', plugins: ['classProperties', 'optionalChaining'], excludedMutations: ['BooleanSubstitution', 'StringLiteral'] }
With mutator
you configure which mutator plugin you want to use, and optionally, which mutation types to exclude from the test run.
The mutator plugin name defaults to javascript
if not specified. Note: this requires you to have the @stryker-mutator/javascript-mutator
plugin installed. The list of excluded mutation types defaults to an empty array, meaning all mutation types will be included in the test.
The full list of mutation types varies slightly between mutators (for example, the javascript
mutator will not use the same mutation types as the typescript
mutator). Mutation type names are case-sensitive, and can be found either in the source code or in a generated Stryker report.
When using the command line, only the mutator name as a string may be provided.
When using the config file, you can provide either a string representing the mutator name, or a MutatorDescriptor
object, like so:
MutatorDescriptor
object: { name: 'name', plugins: ['classProperties', 'optionalChaining'], excludedMutations: ['mutationType1', 'mutationType2', ...] }
:
- The
name
property is mandatory and contains the name of the mutator plugin to use. - The
plugins
property is optional and allows you to specify syntax plugins. Please see the README of your mutator to see which plugins are supported. - The
excludedMutations
property is mandatory and contains the types of mutations to exclude from the test run.
plugins
[string[]
]
Default: ['@stryker-mutator/*']
Command line: --plugins stryker-html-reporter,stryker-karma-runner
Config file: plugins: ['stryker-html-reporter', 'stryker-karma-runner']
With plugins
, you can add additional Node modules for Stryker to load (or require
).
By default, all node_modules
starting with @stryker-mutator/*
will be loaded, so you would normally not need to specify this option.
These modules should be installed right next to stryker. For a current list of plugins,
you can consult npm or
stryker-mutator.io.
reporters
[string[]
]
Default: ['clear-text', 'progress']
Command line: --reporters clear-text,progress,dots,dashboard,html
Config file: reporters: ['clear-text', 'progress', 'dots', 'dashboard', 'html']
With reporters
, you can set the reporters for stryker to use.
These reporters can be used out of the box: clear-text
, progress
, dots
, dashboard
and event-recorder
.
The html
reporter can be installed as a plugin, see the html reporter's readme.
By default, clear-text
and progress
are active if no reporters are configured.
You can load additional plugins to get more reporters. See stryker-mutator.io
for an up-to-date list of supported reporter plugins and a description on each reporter.
The clear-text
reporter supports three additional config options:
allowColor
to use cyan and yellow in printing source file names and positions. This defaults to true
, so specify as clearTextReporter: { allowColor: false },
to disable if you must.logTests
to log the names of unit tests that were run to allow mutants. By default, only the first three are logged. The config for your config file is: clearTextReporter: { logTests: true },
maxTestsToLog
to show more tests that were executed to kill a mutant when logTests
is true. The config for your config file is: clearTextReporter: { logTests: true, maxTestsToLog: 7 },
The dashboard
reporter sends a report to https://dashboard.stryker-mutator.io, enabling you to add a mutation score badge to your readme, as well as hosting your html report on the dashboard. It uses the dashboard.* configuration options. See the Stryker handbook for more info.
symlinkNodeModules
[boolean
]
Default: true
Command line: none
Config file: symlinkNodeModules: true
The symlinkNodeModules
value indicates whether Stryker should create a symbolic link
to your current node_modules directory in the sandbox directories. This makes running your tests by Stryker behave
more like your would run the tests yourself in your project directory.
Only disable this setting if you really know what you are doing.
For example, Jest expects any plugins to be located at "./node_modules/..."
in the Sandbox directory. Another example can be running karma tests where
you specify files from the 'node_modules/angular/...'. Without symlinking the
node_modules directory this would not be possible.
Stryker will look for the node_modules directory to use in the current basePath (or current working directory) and
its parent directories.
tempDirName
[string
]
Default: '.stryker-tmp'
Command line: --tempDirName .stryker-tmp
Config file: tempDirName: '.stryker-tmp'
Choose a different temp dir that Stryker uses for mutation testing. This directory will contain copies of your source code during a mutation test run.
It will be created if it not exists and is entirely deleted after a successful run, so change this with caution.
It is advised to use a directory inside the directory that holds your repository. This way node_modules
are resolved as expected. Be sure to
not check-in your chosen temp directory in your .gitignore
file.
testFramework
[string
]
Default: none
Command line: --testFramework jasmine
Config file: testFramework: 'jasmine'
Configure which test framework you are using.
This option is not mandatory, as Stryker is test framework agnostic (it doesn't care what framework you use),
However, it is required when coverageAnalysis
is set to 'perTest'
, because Stryker needs to hook into the test framework in order to measure code coverage results per test and filter tests to run.
Make sure the plugin is installed for your chosen test framework. E.g. install stryker-mocha-framework
to use 'mocha'
as a test framework.
testRunner
[string
]
Default: 'command'
Command line: --testRunner karma
Config file: testRunner: 'karma'
With testRunner
you specify the test runner that Stryker uses to run your tests. The default value is command
. The command runner runs a configurable bash/cmd command and bases the result on the exit code of that program (0 for success, otherwise failed). You can configure this command via the config file using the commandRunner: { command: 'npm run mocha' }
. It uses npm test
as the command by default.
The command test runner can be made to work in any use case, but comes with a performance
penalty, as Stryker cannot do any optimizations and just runs all tests for all mutants.
If possible, you should try to use one of the test runner plugins that hook into your test runner of choice.
For example: install and use the stryker-karma-runner
to use karma
as a test runner.
See the list of plugins for an up-to-date list of supported test runners and plugins.
thresholds
[object
]
Default: { high: 80, low: 60, break: null }
Command line: none
Config file: thresholds: { high: 80, low: 60, break: null }
Description
Specify the thresholds for mutation score.
mutation score >= high
: Awesome! Reporters should color this green and happy.high > mutation score >= low
: Warning! Reporters should color this orange/yellow. Watch yourself!mutation score < low
: Danger! Reporters should color this in red. You're in danger!mutation score < break
: Error! Stryker will exit with exit code 1, indicating a build failure. No consequence for reporters, though.
It is not allowed to only supply one value of the values (it's all or nothing). However, high
and low
values can be the same, making sure colors are either red or green. Set break
to null
(default) to never let your build fail.
timeoutFactor
[number
]
Default: 1.5
Command line: --timeoutFactor 1.5
Config file: timeoutFactor: 1.5
See Timeout in milliseconds.
timeoutMS
[number
]
Default: 5000
Command line: --timeoutMS 5000
Config file: timeoutMS: 5000
When Stryker is mutating code, it cannot determine indefinitely whether a code mutation results in an infinite loop (see Halting problem).
In order to battle infinite loops, a test run gets killed after a certain period of time. This period is configurable with two settings: timeoutMS
and timeoutFactor
.
To calculate the actual timeout in milliseconds the, following formula is used:
timeoutForTestRunMs = netTimeMs * timeoutFactor + timeoutMS + overheadMs
Both netTimeMs
and overheadMs
are calculated during the initial test run. They are logged on info
level. For example when overheadMs
is 92 and netTimeMs
is 5: Initial test run succeeded. Ran 6 tests in 4 seconds (net 5 ms, overhead 92 ms).
With timeoutFactor
you can configure the allowed deviation relative to the time of a normal test run. Tweak this if you notice that mutants are prone to creating slower code, but not infinite loops.
timeoutMS
lets you configure an absolute deviation. Use it, if you run Stryker on a busy machine and you need to wait longer to make sure that the code indeed entered an infinite loop.
transpilers
[string[]
]
Default: []
With transpilers
you configure which transpiler plugins should transpile the code before it's executed. This is an array where the transpilers are called in the other of the array. This defaults to an empty array meaning no transpilation will be done.