On Understanding Contextual Changes of Failures

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2021

Authors

Ribeiro, F (Author) Other; Rui Abreu (Author) FEUP; Saraiva, J (Author) Other

Conference proceedings International

Title: 21st IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security, QRS 2021, Hainan, China, December 6-10, 2021

Pages: 1036-1047

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 0 Citations

Scopus - 2 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00W-AMY

DOI: 10.1109/qrs54544.2021.00112

Abstract (EN): Recent studies show that many real-world software faults are due to slight modifications (mutations) to the program. Thus, analyzing transformations made by a developer and associating them with well-known mutation operators can help pinpoint and repair the root cause of failures. This paper proposes a mutation operator inference technique: given the original program and one of its subsequent forms, it infers which mutation operators would transform the original and produce such a version. Moreover, we implemented this technique as a tool called Morpheus, which analyzes faulty Java programs. We have also validated both the technique and tool by analyzing a repository with 1753 modifications for 20 different programs, successfully inferring mutation operators 78% of times. Furthermore, we also show that several program versions result from not just a single mutation operator but multiple ones. In the end, we resort to real-world case studies to demonstrate the advantages of this approach regarding program repair.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 12