Memories of bug fixes

The change history of a software project contains a rich collection of code changes that record previous development experience. Changes that fix bugs are especially interesting, since they record both the old buggy code and the new fixed code. This paper presents a bug finding algorithm using bug fix memories: a project-specific bug and fix knowledge base developed by analyzing the history of bug fixes. A bug finding tool, BugMem, implements the algorithm. The approach is different from bug finding tools based on theorem proving or static model checking such as Bandera, ESC/Java, FindBugs, JLint, and PMD. Since these tools use pre-defined common bug patterns to find bugs, they do not aim to identify project-specific bugs. Bug fix memories use a learning process, so the bug patterns are projectspecific, and project-specific bugs can be detected. The algorithm and tool are assessed by evaluating if real bugs and fixes in project histories can be found in the bug fix memories. Analysis ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: SIGSOFT
• Authors: Sunghun Kim, Kai Pan, E. James Whitehead Jr.
• Keywords: Bug Finding Tools, Bug Fix, Bug Fix Memories, SIGSOFT 2006, Software Engineering