Context-aware statistical debugging: from bug predictors to faulty control flow paths

Effective bug localization is important for realizing automated debugging. One attractive approach is to apply statistical techniques on a collection of evaluation profiles of program properties to help localize bugs. Previous research has proposed various specialized techniques to isolate certain program predicates as bug predictors. However, because many bugs may not be directly associated with these predicates, these techniques are often ineffective in localizing bugs. Relevant control flow paths that may contain bug locations are more informative than stand-alone predicates for discovering and understanding bugs. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically generate such faulty control flow paths that link many bug predictors together for revealing bugs. Our approach combines feature selection (to accurately select failure-related predicates as bug predictors), clustering (to group correlated predicates), and control flow graph traversal in a novel way to help genera...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: KBSE
• Authors: Lingxiao Jiang, Zhendong Su
• Keywords: Bug Predictors, Control flow Paths, Faulty Control, KBSE 2007, Software Engineering