Isolating failure causes through test case generation

Manual debugging is driven by experiments—test runs that narrow down failure causes by systematically confirming or excluding individual factors. The BUGEX approach leverages test case generation to systematically isolate such causes from a single failing test run—causes such as properties of execution states or branches taken that correlate with the failure. Identifying these causes allows for deriving conclusions as: “The failure occurs whenever the daylight savings time starts at midnight local time.” In our evaluation, a prototype of BUGEX precisely pinpointed important failure explaining facts for six out of seven real-life bugs. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.5 [Software Engineering]: Testing and Debugging—Diagnostics, Testing tools General Terms Experimentation Keywords Automated debugging, test case generation, failure classification, statistical debugging

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: ISSTA
• Authors: Jeremias Röbetaler, Gordon Fraser, Andreas Zeller, Alessandro Orso
• Keywords: Execution States, ISSTA 2012, Life Bugs, Software Engineering, Test Case Generation