Semantic Patch Inference

• Main Authors: Andersen, Jesper, Nguyen, Anh Cuong, LO, David, Lawall, Julia, KHOO, Siau-Cheng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: Software evolution; collateral evolution; semantic pat; Computer Sciences; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1574; http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2360000/2351753/p382-andersen.pdf?ip=202.161.43.232&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=114134355&CFTOKEN=87100442&__acm__=1347419812_e6995483f9578dba755c863acd0545a9
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We propose a tool for inferring transformation specifications from a few examples of original and updated code. These transformation specifications may contain multiple code fragments from within a single function, all of which must be present for the transformation to apply. This makes the inferred transformations context sensitive. Our algorithm is based on depth-first search, with pruning. Because it is applied locally to a collection of functions that contain related changes, it is efficient in practice. We illustrate the approach on an example drawn from recent changes to the Linux kernel.