Search-Based Fault Localization

• Main Authors: WANG, Shaowei, LO, David, JIANG, Lingxiao, Lucia, -, LAU, Hoong Chuin
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2011
• Subjects: Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1391; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/2390/viewcontent/ase11faultsearch.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Many spectrum-based fault localization measures have been proposed in the literature. However, no single fault localization measure completely outperforms others: a measure which is more accurate in localizing some bugs in some programs is less accurate in localizing other bugs in other programs. This paper proposes to compose existing spectrum-based fault localization measures into an improved measure. We model the composition of various measures as an optimization problem and present a search-based approach to explore the space of many possible compositions and output a heuristically near optimal composite measure. We employ two search-based strategies including genetic algorithm and simulated annealing to look for optimal solutions and compare the effectiveness of the resulting composite measures on benchmark software systems. Compared to individual spectrum-based fault localization techniques, our composite measures perform statistically significantly better.