Discussion: How to arrange mutant levels?

[richardwerkman]

In stryker-net we want to introduct a new feature: mutant levels. By setting a higher mutation level, more complex mutants are placed. All higher levels include the lower level mutations as well. Maybe we can think of universal levels for each stryker. So the levels mean the same thing across stryker.

My current proposal for the levels is:

Mutations	Level
Arithmetic Operators	Basic
Block (if we ever get it done)	Basic
Equality Operators	Standard
Boolean Literals	Standard
Assignment statements	Standard
Collection initializer	Standard
Unary Operators	Standard
Update Operators	Standard
String Literals and Constants	Standard
Bitwise Operators	Standard
Checked Statements	Advanced
Linq Methods	Advanced
Regex (coming soon...)	Advanced
Advanced Linq Methods	Complete
Advanced Regex	Complete

This proposal is for mutators as a whole, but I can imagine that some mutations inside the mutator belong to another level than others. For example:
> to < basic
> to => advanced

[richardwerkman]

@nicojs @Mobrockers @hugo-vrijswijk your thoughts?

[rouke-broersma]

Mutations	Level
Arithmetic Operators	Basic
Block (if we ever get it done)	Basic
Equality Operators	Standard
Boolean Literals	Standard
Assignment statements	Standard
Collection initializer	Standard
Unary Operators	Standard
Update Operators	Standard
String Literals and Constants	Standard
Checked Statements	Standard
Linq	Advanced
Regex	Complete
Bitwise Operators	Complete

For the Bitwise operators I am thinking mostly about XOR mutations.

I would lean more to something like this, but I would prefer if Linq and Regex are split into standard advanced and complete because I would not expect most linq mutators to be disabled by default. For regex we need to find the right balance between ease to fix and amount of mutations this adds to the run time.