Testing the Compiler for a New-Born Programming Language: An Industrial Case Study (Experience Paper)
Yingquan Zhao, Junjie Chen, Ruifeng Fu, Haojie Ye, Zan Wang · 2023
Due to the critical role of compilers, many compiler testing techniques have been proposed, two most notable categories among which are grammar-based and metamorphic-based techniques. All of them have been extensively studied for testing mature compilers. However, it is typical to develop a new compiler for a new-born programming language in practice. In this scenario, the existing techniques are hardly applicable due to some major reasons: (1) no reference compilers to support differential testing, (2) lack of program analysis tools to support most of metamorphic-based compiler testing, (3) substantial implementation effort incurred by different programming language features. Hence, it is unknown how the existing techniques perform in this new scenario.