DocumentCode :
1993720
Title :
Lightweight fault-localization using multiple coverage types
Author :
Santelices, Raul ; Jones, James A. ; Yu, Yanbing ; Harrold, Mary Jean
Author_Institution :
Coll. of Comput., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA
fYear :
2009
fDate :
16-24 May 2009
Firstpage :
56
Lastpage :
66
Abstract :
Lightweight fault-localization techniques use program coverage to isolate the parts of the code that are most suspicious of being faulty. In this paper, we present the results of a study of three types of program coverage-statements, branches, and data dependencies-to compare their effectiveness in localizing faults. The study shows that no single coverage type performs best for all faults-different kinds of faults are best localized by different coverage types. Based on these results, we present a new coverage-based approach to fault localization that leverages the unique qualities of each coverage type by combining them. Because data dependencies are noticeably more expensive to monitor than branches, we also investigate the effects of replacing data-dependence coverage with an approximation inferred from branch coverage. Our empirical results show that (1) the cost of fault localization using combinations of coverage is less than using any individual coverage type and closer to the best case (without knowing in advance which kinds of faults are present), and (2) using inferred data-dependence coverage retains most of the benefits of combinations.
Keywords :
program debugging; branch coverage; data dependencies; lightweight fault localization; program coverage; Condition monitoring; Costs; Educational institutions; Informatics; Instruments; Isolation technology; Java; Performance evaluation; Runtime; Software debugging;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering, 2009. ICSE 2009. IEEE 31st International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Vancouver, BC
ISSN :
0270-5257
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-3453-4
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/ICSE.2009.5070508
Filename :
5070508
Link To Document :
بازگشت