article

Iterative delta debugging

Author:

Cyrille ArthoAuthors Info & Claims

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT), Volume 13, Issue 3

Pages 223 - 246

Published: 01 June 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Automated debugging attempts to locate the reason for a failure. Delta debugging minimizes the difference between two inputs, where one input is processed correctly while the other input causes a failure, using a series of test runs to determine the outcome of applied changes. Delta debugging is applicable to inputs or to the program itself, as long as a correct version of the program exists. However, complex errors are often masked by other program defects, making it impossible to obtain a correct version of the program through delta debugging in such cases. Iterative delta debugging extends delta debugging and removes a series of defects step by step, until the originally unresolved defect is isolated. The method is automated and managed to localize a bug in some real-life examples.

References

[1]

Abreu, R., Zoeteweij, P., van Gemund, A.: Sepctrum-based multiple fault localization. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2009), pp. 88---102. Auckland, New Zealand (2009)

Digital Library

[2]

Ali, S., Andrews, J., Dhandapani, T., Wang, W.: Evaluating the accuracy of fault localization techniques. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2009), pp. 76---87. Auckland, New Zealand (2009)

Digital Library

[3]

Artho, C.: Combining Static and Dynamic Analysis to Find Multi-threading Faults Beyond Data Races. PhD thesis, ETH Zürich (2005)

[4]

Artho, C.: Iterative delta debugging. In: Proceedings of the 4th Haifa Verification Conference (HVC 2008). Haifa, Israel (2008)

[5]

Artho, C., Schuppan, V., Biere, A., Eugster, P., Baur, M., Zweimüller, B.: JNuke: Efficient Dynamic Analysis for Java. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV 2004). LNCS, vol. 3114, pp. 462---465. Springer, Boston (2004)

[6]

Artho, C., Shibayama, E., Honiden, S.: Iterative delta debugging. In: 19th IFIP International Conference on Testing of Communicating Systems (TESTCOM 2007). Poster/Tools session, Tallinn, Estonia (2007)

[7]

Beck K.: Extreme programming explained: embrace change. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Reading (2000)

[8]

Biere A., Cimatti A., Clarke E., Strichman O., Zhu Y.: Bounded model checking. Adv Comput 58, 118---149 (2003)

[9]

Brummayer, R., Biere, A.: Fuzzing and delta-debugging SMT solvers. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT'09). Montreal, Canada (2009)

Digital Library

[10]

Chilimbi, T., Liblit, B., Mehra, K., Nori, A., Vaswani, K.:Holmes: Effective statistical debugging via efficient path profiling. In: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2009), pp. 34---44. ACM SIGSOFT and IEEE, IEEE, Vancouver, Canada (2009)

Digital Library

[11]

Choi, J., Zeller, A.: Isolating failure-inducing thread schedules. In: Proceedings of the ACM/SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2002), pp. 210---220. ACM, Roma (2002)

Digital Library

[12]

Csallner C., Smaragdakis Y., Xie T.: DSD-Crasher: a hybrid analysis tool for bug finding. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. (TOSEM) 17(2), 1---37 (2008)

Digital Library

[13]

Dallmeier, V., Zeller, A., Meyer, B.: Generating fixes from object behavior anomalies. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2009), pp. 550---554, Auckland, New Zealand (2009)

Digital Library

[14]

Engler, D., Chen, D., Chou, A.: Bugs as deviant behavior: A general approach to inferring errors in systems code. In: Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pp. 57---72 (2001)

Digital Library

[15]

Ernst M., Perkins J., Guo P., McCamant S., Pacheco C., Tschantz M., Xiao C.: The Daikon system for dynamic detection of likely invariants. Sci. Comput. Program. 69(1---3), 35---45 (2007)

[16]

Gardner, B.: Uncrustify code beautifier. http://uncrustify.sourceforge.net/ (2009)

[17]

Gondow, K., Suzuki, T., Kawashima, H.: Binary-level lightweight data integration to develop program understanding tools for embedded software in C. In: Proceedings of the 11th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2004), pp. 336---345. IEEE Computer Society, Washington (2004)

Digital Library

[18]

Gupta, N., He, H., Zhang, X., Gupta, R.: Locating faulty code using failure-inducing chops. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2005), pp. 263---272. ACM, Long Beach (2005)

Digital Library

[19]

Jones, J., Harrold, M.: Empirical evaluation of the Tarantula automatic fault-localization technique. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2005), pp. 273---282. ACM, Long Beach (2005)

Digital Library

[20]

Jones, J., Harrold, M., Stasko, J.: Visualization of test information to assist fault localization. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2002), pp. 467---477. ACM, Orlando (2002)

[21]

Korel B., Laski J.: Dynamic program slicing. Inf. Process. Lett. 29(3), 155---163 (1988)

Digital Library

[22]

Liblit B., Aiken A., Zheng A., Jordan M.: Bug isolation via remote program sampling. SIGPLAN Not. 38(5), 141---154 (2003)

Digital Library

[23]

Lindholm, T., Kangasharju, J., Tarkoma, S.: Fast and simple XML tree differencing by sequence alignment. In: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Document engineering (DocEng 2006), pp. 75---84. ACM, New York (2006)

Digital Library

[24]

Malik, M., Ghori, K., Elkarablieh, B., Khurshid, S.: A case for automated debugging using data structure repair. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2009), pp. 620---624. Auckland, New Zealand (2009)

Digital Library

[25]

Manevich, R., Sridharan, M., Adams, S., Das, M., Yang, Z.: PSE: Explaining Program Failures via Postmortem Static Analysis. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2004), pp. 63---72. ACM, Newport Beach, USA (2004)

Digital Library

[26]

Maruyama K., Yamamoto S.: A tool platform using an XML representation of source code information. IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. E89-D(7), 2214---2222 (2006)

[27]

Mayer, W., Stumptner, M.: Evaluating models for model-based debugging. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2008), pp. 128---137. IEEE Computer Society, L'Aquila, Italy (2008)

Digital Library

[28]

Misherghi, G., Su, Z.: HDD: hierarchical delta debugging. In: Proc. 28th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE 2006), pp. 142---151. ACM Press, Shanghai (2006)

Digital Library

[29]

Myers G.: Art of Software Testing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York (1979)

[30]

Nethercote, N., Seward, J.: Valgrind: A program supervision framework. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Run-time Verification (RV 2003), vol. 89 of ENTCS, pp. 22---43, Elsevier, Boulder (2003)

[31]

Peled D.: Software Reliability Methods. Springer, Berlin (2001)

[32]

Ren, X., Ryder, B.: Heuristic ranking of Java program edits for fault localization. In: Proceedings of the ACM/SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2007), pp. 239---249. ACM, London (2007)

Digital Library

[33]

Ren, X., Ryder, B., Stoerzer, M., Tip, F.: Chianti: a change impact analysis tool for Java programs. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2005), pp. 664---665. ACM, St. Louis (2005)

Digital Library

[34]

Renieris, M., Reiss, S.: Fault localization with nearest neighbor queries. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2003), pp. 30. IEEE Computer Society, Montreal (2003)

Digital Library

[35]

Sutton M., Greene A., Amini P.: Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery. Addison-Wesley Professional, Reading (2007)

[36]

Takanen A., DeMott J., Miller C.: Fuzzing for Software Security Testing and Quality Assurance. Artech House, Inc., Norwood (2008)

[37]

Torvalds, L., Hamano, C.: git-bisect(1) manual page. http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-bisect.html (2009)

[38]

Vida, A.: Random test case generation and delta debugging for bit-vector logic with arrays. Master's thesis, Johannes Kepler University, Linz (2008)

[39]

Visser W., Havelund K., Brat G., Park S., Lerda F.: Model checking programs. Autom. Softw. Eng. J. 10(2), 203---232 (2003)

[40]

Weimer, W., Nguyen, T., Le Goues, C., Forrest, S.: Automatically finding patches using genetic programming. In: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2009), pp. 364---374. IEEE Computer Society, Vancouver (2009)

Digital Library

[41]

Weiser M.: Programmers use slices when debugging. Commun. ACM 25(7), 446---452 (1982)

Digital Library

[42]

Wotawa, F., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W.: Model-based debugging or how to diagnose programs automatically. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems (IEA/AIE 2002), pp. 746---757. Springer, London (2002)

[43]

Zeller A., Hildebrandt R.: Simplifying and isolating failure-inducing input. Softw. Eng. 28(2), 183---200 (2002)

Digital Library

[44]

Zhang, S., Gu, Z., Lin, Y., Zhao, J.: Celadon: a change impact analysis tool for aspect-oriented programs. In: ICSE Companion 2008: Companion of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 913---914. ACM, Leipzig (2008)

[45]

Zhang, S., Lin, Y., Gu, Z., Zhao, J.: Effective identification of failure-inducing changes: a hybrid approach. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT Workshop on Program Analysis for Software Tools and Engineering (PASTE 2008), pp. 77---83. ACM, Atlanta (2008)

Digital Library

Cited By

Sharma STanksalkar SCherupattamoolayil SMachiry AQuek TGao DZhou JCardenas A(2024)Fuzzing API Error Handling Behaviors using Coverage Guided Fault InjectionProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3637650(1495-1509)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3634737.3637650
Yang XLin YZhang YHuang LDong JMei HChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)DeepDebugger: An Interactive Time-Travelling Debugging Approach for Deep ClassifiersProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616252(973-985)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616252
Yang CChen JFan XJiang JSun JJust RFraser G(2023)Silent Compiler Bug De-duplication via Three-Dimensional AnalysisProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3597926.3598087(677-689)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597926.3598087
Show More Cited By

Iterative delta debugging
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis

Recommendations

Towards automated debugging in software evolution

Delta debugging has been proposed to isolate failure-inducing changes when regressions occur. In this work, we focus on evaluating delta debugging in practical settings from developers' perspectives. A collection of real regressions taken from medium-...
Practical isolation of failure-inducing changes for debugging regression faults
ASE '12: Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

During software evolution, new released versions still contain many bugs. One common scenario is that end users encounter regression faults and submit them to bug tracking systems. Different from in-house regression testing, typically only one test ...
HDD: hierarchical delta debugging
ICSE '06: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering

Inputs causing a program to fail are usually large and often contain information irrelevant to the failure. It thus helps debugging to simplify program inputs. The Delta Debugging algorithm is a general technique applicable to minimizing all failure-...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT)

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT) Volume 13, Issue 3

June 2011

84 pages

ISSN:1433-2779

EISSN:1433-2787

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © Copyright © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

Publisher

Springer-Verlag

Berlin, Heidelberg

Publication History

Published: 01 June 2011

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

12
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 20 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Sharma STanksalkar SCherupattamoolayil SMachiry AQuek TGao DZhou JCardenas A(2024)Fuzzing API Error Handling Behaviors using Coverage Guided Fault InjectionProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3637650(1495-1509)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3634737.3637650
Yang XLin YZhang YHuang LDong JMei HChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)DeepDebugger: An Interactive Time-Travelling Debugging Approach for Deep ClassifiersProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616252(973-985)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616252
Yang CChen JFan XJiang JSun JJust RFraser G(2023)Silent Compiler Bug De-duplication via Three-Dimensional AnalysisProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3597926.3598087(677-689)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597926.3598087
Song XLin YWu YZhang YNg SPeng XDong JMei HRoychoudhury ACadar CKim M(2022)RegMiner: mining replicable regression dataset from code repositoriesProceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3558929(1711-1715)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3540250.3558929
Song XLin YNg SWu YPeng XDong JMei HRyu SSmaragdakis Y(2022)RegMiner: towards constructing a large regression dataset from code evolution historyProceedings of the 31st ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3533767.3534224(314-326)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3533767.3534224
Lockhart BPeng JWu WWang JWu E(2021)Explaining inference queries with bayesian optimizationProceedings of the VLDB Endowment10.14778/3476249.347630414:11(2576-2585)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3476249.3476304
Abrath BCoppens BBroeck JWyseur BCabutto AFalcarin PSutter B(2020)Code Renewability for Native Software ProtectionACM Transactions on Privacy and Security10.1145/340489123:4(1-31)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3404891
Chen JPatra JPradel MXiong YZhang HHao DZhang L(2020)A Survey of Compiler TestingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/336356253:1(1-36)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3363562
Kalhauge CPalsberg JDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)Binary reduction of dependency graphsProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3338956(556-566)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3338956
Hashimoto MMori AIzumida TLeavens GGarcia APăsăreanu C(2018)Automated patch extraction via syntax- and semantics-aware Delta debugging on source code changesProceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3236024.3236047(598-609)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236024.3236047
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents