RESTORE: Retrospective Fault Localization Enhancing Automated Program Repair

Fault localization is a crucial step of automated program repair, because accurately identifying program locations that are most closely implicated with a fault greatly affects the effectiveness of the patching process. An ideal fault localization technique would provide precise information while re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2020-03
Main Authors: Xu, Tongtong, Chen, Liushan, Yu, Pei, Zhang, Tian, Pan, Minxue, Furia, Carlo A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automation
Cost analysis
Fault location
Localization
Mutation
Patching
Repair
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Fault localization is a crucial step of automated program repair, because accurately identifying program locations that are most closely implicated with a fault greatly affects the effectiveness of the patching process. An ideal fault localization technique would provide precise information while requiring moderate computational resources---to best support an efficient search for correct fixes. In contrast, most automated program repair tools use standard fault localization techniques---which are not tightly integrated with the overall program repair process, and hence deliver only subpar efficiency. In this paper, we present retrospective fault localization: a novel fault localization technique geared to the requirements of automated program repair. A key idea of retrospective fault localization is to reuse the outcome of failed patch validation to support mutation-based dynamic analysis---providing accurate fault localization information without incurring onerous computational costs. We implemented retrospective fault localization in a tool called RESTORE---based on the JAID Java program repair system. Experiments involving faults from the Defects4J standard benchmark indicate that retrospective fault localization can boost automated program repair: RESTORE efficiently explores a large fix space, delivering state-of-the-art effectiveness (41 Defects4J bugs correctly fixed, 8 more than any other automated repair tools for Java) while simultaneously boosting performance (speedup over 3 compared to JAID). Retrospective fault localization is applicable to any automated program repair techniques that rely on fault localization and dynamic validation of patches.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1906.01778