Spectrum-Based Fault Localization (SBFL) is a semi-automated debugging technique, which gained huge popularity in the last decades due to its intuitive approach and relatively simple implementability. Despite this, the performance of practical SBFL techniques in terms of fault localization capability do not reach a threshold which would enable their acceptance by professional programmers. Almost all modern SBFL approaches are based on the code coverage-based spectrum, and on the assumption that a code element covered by failing tests should be treated as suspicious. However, it is easy to see that this is an over-approximation because many code elements may be executed that do not contribute to the test output, hence serving as noise in the process. A possible solution is to use backward dynamic program slices as program spectra computed from the output statement as the criterion, instead of the coverage. There are very little theoretical and practical results about this approach, so in this work we revisit the method and show how much inferior coverage-based spectra are compared to slice-based spectra, both on theoretical and practical levels. We argue that code coverage-based SBFL is currently in a research pit due to this inherent approximation, and research on slice-based spectra should once more attain much higher focus.
Mon 17 AprDisplayed time zone: Dublin change
14:00 - 15:30 | Session 4: Fault Localization & DebuggingResearch Papers / Tool Demo / Industry / Journal-First Papers at Pearse suite Chair(s): Shin Yoo KAIST | ||
14:00 20mTalk | Flake Aware Culprit Finding Industry Tim A. D. Henderson Google LLC, Bobby Dorward Google, Eric Nickell Google, Collin Johnson Google, Avi Kondareddy Google LLC Pre-print | ||
14:20 20mTalk | An Empirical Characterization of Software Bugs in Open-Source Cyber-Physical Systems Journal-First Papers Fiorella Zampetti University of Sannio, Italy, Ritu Kapur University of Sannio, Massimiliano Di Penta University of Sannio, Italy, Sebastiano Panichella Zurich University of Applied Sciences | ||
14:40 20mTalk | A Case Against Coverage-Based Program Spectra Research Papers Péter Attila Soha Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Tamás Gergely Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Ferenc Horv�th University of Szeged, Department of Software Engineering, Béla Vancsics Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Árpád Beszédes Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged | ||
15:00 10mTalk | SFLaaS: Software Fault Localization as a Service Tool Demo Qusay Idrees Sarhan Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Hassan Bapeer Hassan University of Duhok, Árpád Beszédes Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged |