Prevalence of Single-Fault Fixes and Its Impact on Fault Localization

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2017

Authors

Perez, A (Author) Other; Rui Abreu (Author) FEUP; d'Amorim, M (Author) Other

Conference proceedings International

Title: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST)

Pages: 12-22

Indexing

Scopus - 31 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00M-W6C

DOI: 10.1109/icst.2017.9

Abstract (EN): Several fault predictors were proposed in the context of Spectrum-based Fault Localization approaches to rank software components in order of suspiciousness of being the root-cause of observed failures. Previous work has also shown that some of the fault predictors (near-)optimally rank software components, provided that there is one fault in the system. Despite this, further work is being spent on creating more complex, computationally expensive, model-based techniques that can handle multiple-faulted scenarios accurately. However, our hypothesis is that when software is being developed, bugs arise one-at-a-time and therefore can be considered as single-faulted scenarios. We describe an approach to mine repositories, find bug-fixes, and catalog them according to the number of faults they fix, to assess the prevalence of single-fault fixes. Our empirical study using 279 open-source projects reveals that there is a prevalence of single-fault fixes, with over 82% of all fixes only eliminating one bug from the system, enabling the use of simpler, (near-)optimal, fault predictors. Moreover, we draw on the practical implications of our findings to influence and set direction for future research.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 10