Adding context to fault localization with integration coverage

Fault localization is a costly task in the debugging process. Several techniques to automate fault localization have been proposed aiming at reducing effort and time spent. Some techniques use heuristics based on code coverage data. The goal is to indicate program code excerpts more likely to contain faults. The coverage data mostly used in automated debugging is based on white-box unit testing (e.g., statements, basic blocks, predicates). This paper presents a technique which uses integration coverage data to guide the fault localization process. By ranking most suspicious pairs of method invocations, roadmaps-sorted lists of methods to be investigated-are created. At each method, unit coverage (e.g., basic blocks) is used to locate the fault site. Fifty-five bugs of four programs containing 2K to 80K lines of code (LOC) were analyzed. The results indicate that, by using the roadmaps, the effectiveness of the fault localization process is improved: 78% of all the faults are reached within a fixed amount of basic blocks; 40% more than an approach based on the Tarantula technique. Furthermore, fewer blocks have to be investigated until reaching the fault.