ICSE 2026
Sun 12 - Sat 18 April 2026 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

\textbf{\textit{Background:}} Compilers are fundamental to software development, translating high-level source code into executable software systems. Faults in compilers can have severe consequences and thus effective localization and resolution of compiler bugs are crucial. \textbf{\textit{Problem:}} In practice, developers often examine version history to identify and investigate bug-inducing commit (BIC) for fixing bugs. However, while numerous sophisticated Spectrum-Based Fault Localization (SBFL) techniques have been proposed for compiler fault isolation, their effectiveness has not been evaluated against the BIC-based strategies widely adopted by developers. \textbf{\textit{Objective:}} This study aims to address the gap by directly comparing the BIC-based strategy named BASIC with established SBFL techniques in the domain of compiler fault localization. The BIC-based strategy aligns closely with developer practices, which directly identifying the BIC and treating its associated files as faulty candidates. \textbf{\textit{Method:}} The BASIC technique identifies the most recent \textit{good release} and earliest \textit{bad release}, employing a binary search to pinpoint the bug-inducing commit. All files modified in this commit are flagged as potentially faulty. We rigorously compare BASIC against SBFL-based techniques using identical datasets and evaluation metrics. \textbf{\textit{Result:}} Our analysis reveals that BASIC outperforms existing SBFL-based techniques in most cases, particularly in the critical Top-1 and Top-5 ranking metrics. \textbf{\textit{Conclusion:}} This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the practical efficacy of SBFL-based techniques in real-world scenarios. We recommend that future research should adopt BASIC as a baseline for comparison when developing new compiler fault isolation methods.