On Testing and Debugging Quantum Software
This addresses the need for quality assurance in quantum programming for practitioners and researchers, but it is incremental as it reviews and highlights existing or proposed techniques without introducing new methods.
The paper tackles the problem of testing and debugging quantum software as quantum computers become more mainstream, discussing use-cases and tactics to ensure software quality, but does not report specific results or concrete numbers.
Quantum computers are becoming more mainstream. As more programmers are starting to look at writing quantum programs, they need to test and debug their code. In this paper, we discuss various use-cases for quantum computers, either standalone or as part of a System of Systems. Based on these use-cases, we discuss some testing and debugging tactics that one can leverage to ensure the quality of the quantum software. We also highlight quantum-computer-specific issues and list novel techniques that are needed to address these issues. The practitioners can readily apply some of these tactics to their process of writing quantum programs, while researchers can learn about opportunities for future work.