FLUCCS: Using Code and Change Metrics to Improve Fault Localization
Fault localization aims to support the debugging activities of human developers by highlighting the program elements that are suspected to be responsible for the observed failure. Spectrum Based Fault Localization (SBFL), an existing localization technique that only relies on the coverage and pass/fail results of executed test cases, has been widely studied but also criticized for the lack of precision and limited effort reduction. To overcome restrictions of techniques based purely on coverage, we extend SBFL with code and change metrics that have been studied in the context of defect prediction, such as size, age and code churn. Using suspiciousness values from existing SBFL formulas and these source code metrics as features, we apply two learn-to-rank techniques, Genetic Programming (GP) and linear rank Support Vector Machines (SVMs). We evaluate our approach with a ten-fold cross validation of method level fault localization, using 210 real world faults from the Defects4J repository. GP with additional source code metrics ranks the faulty method at the top for 106 faults, and within the top five for 173 faults. This is a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art SBFL formulas, the best of which can rank 49 and 127 faults at the top and within the top five, respectively.
Wed 12 JulDisplayed time zone: Tijuana, Baja California change
13:20 - 15:00 | Fault Localization and Mutation TestingTechnical Papers at Bren 1414 Chair(s): Alex Orso Georgia Institute of Technology | ||
13:20 25mTalk | Boosting Spectrum-Based Fault Localization using PageRank Technical Papers Mengshi Zhang University of Texas at Austin, USA, Xia Li University of Texas at Dallas, USA, Lingming Zhang , Sarfraz Khurshid University of Texas at Austin DOI | ||
13:45 25mTalk | FLUCCS: Using Code and Change Metrics to Improve Fault Localization Technical Papers DOI | ||
14:10 25mTalk | Inferring Mutant Utility from Program Context Technical Papers René Just University of Massachusetts, USA, Bob Kurtz George Mason University, USA, Paul Ammann George Mason University, USA DOI Pre-print | ||
14:35 25mTalk | Faster Mutation Analysis via Equivalence Modulo States Technical Papers Bo Wang Peking University, China, Yingfei Xiong Peking University, Yangqingwei Shi Peking University, Lu Zhang Peking University, Dan Hao Peking University DOI Pre-print |