Mutation testing is a fault-oriented software testing method

which adopts manually injected defects for guiding the generation of test data and evaluating their adequacy. Researchers in the community of software engineering have paid much attention to mutation testing. The prevalence of multi-core architecture makes an ever increasing need for developing reliable concurrent programs. Many scholars have attempted to employ mutation testing to concurrent programs

with the purpose of improving the reliability and efficiency of testing these programs in recent years. Firstly

the difference between this study and previous reviews is displayed. Then

following the background related to concurrent programs and mutation testing

this study surveys the progress on mutation testing of concurrent programs from the following three aspects

mutation implementation

mutation testing adequacy criteria

and test data generation. Specifically

it surveys techniques related to optimizing mutation testing from such aspects as designing mutation operators

selective mutation

high-order mutation

weak mutation

methods of test data generation

and prototype tools. Finally

this study discusses some topics to be further researched.