MulTi-Wise Sampling: Trading Uniform T-Wise Feature Interaction Coverage for Smaller Samples

Ensuring the functional safety of highly configurable systems often requires testing representative subsets of all possible configurations to reduce testing effort and save resources. The ratio of covered t-wise feature interactions (i.e., T-Wise Feature Interaction Coverage) is a common criterion for determining whether a subset of configurations is representative and capable of finding faults. Existing t-wise sampling algorithms uniformly cover t-wise feature interactions for all features, resulting in lengthy execution times and large sample sizes, particularly when large t-wise feature interactions are considered (i.e., high values of t). In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to t-wise feature interaction sampling, questioning the necessity of uniform coverage across all t-wise feature interactions, called emphmulTiWise. Our approach prioritizes between subsets of critical and non-critical features, considering higher t-values for subsets of critical features when generating a t-wise feature interaction sample. We evaluate our approach using subject systems from real-world applications, including busybox, soletta, fiasco, and uclibc. Our results show that sacrificing uniform t-wise feature interaction coverage between all features reduces the time needed to generate a sample and the resulting sample size. Hence, mulTiWise Sampling offers an alternative to existing approaches if knowledge about feature criticality is available.