Interactive Fault Localization Using Test Information

• 作 者: Dan Hao Lu Zhang Tao Xie Hong
• 机 构: Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies,Ministry of Education,Institute of Software
• 出 处: 计算机科学技术学报（英文版）
• 发表日期: 2009年5期
• 关键词: debugging fault localization interactive approach
• 基金项目: the Science Fund for Creative Rcsearch Groups of China;国家高技术研究发展计划(863计划);国家重点基础研究发展规划(973计划);国家自然科学基金;the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Project

Debugging is a time-consuming task in software development.Although various automated approaches have been proposed,they are not effective enough.On the other hand,in manual debugging,developers have difficulty in choosing breakpoints.To address these problems and help developers locate faults effectively,we propose an interactive fault-localization framework,combining the benefits of automated approaches and manual debugging.Before the fault is found,this framework continuously recommends checking points based on statements’suspicions.which are calculated according to the execution information of test cases and the feedback information from the developer at earlier checking points.Then we propose a naive approach.which is an initial implementation of this framework.However.with this naive approach or manual debugging,developers’wrong estimation of whether the faulty statement is executed before the checking point(breakpoint)may make the debugging process fail.So we propose another robust approach based on this framework,handling cases where developers make mistakes during the fault-localization process.We performed two experimental studies and the results show that the two interactive approaches are quite effective compared with existing fault-localization approaches.Moreover,the robust approach can help developers find faults when they make wrong estimation at some checking points.