Generating Fixes from Object Behavior Anomalies

Advances in recent years have made it possible in some cases to locate a bug (the source of a failure) automatically. But debugging is also about correcting bugs. Can tools do this automatically? The results reported in this paper, from the new PACHIKA tool, suggest that such a goal may be reachable. PACHIKA leverages differences in program behavior to generate program fixes directly. It automatically infers object behavior models from executions, determines differences between passing and failing runs, generates possible fixes, and assesses them via the regression test suite. Evaluated on the ASPECTJ bug history, PACHIKA generates a valid fix for 3 out of 18 crashing bugs; every fix pinpoints the bug location and passes the ASPECTJ test suite.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: KBSE
• Authors: Valentin Dallmeier, Andreas Zeller, Bertrand Meyer
• Keywords: ASPECTJ Bug History, KBSE 2009, PACHIKA Leverages Differences, Software Engineering, Test Suite