research-article

Reusing debugging knowledge via trace-based bug search

Authors:

Zhendong SuAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '12: Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications

Pages 927 - 942

https://doi.org/10.1145/2384616.2384684

Published: 19 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Some bugs, among the millions that exist, are similar to each other. One bug-fixing tactic is to search for similar bugs that have been reported and resolved in the past. A fix for a similar bug can help a developer understand a bug, or even directly fix it. Studying bugs with similar symptoms, programmers may determine how to detect or resolve them. To speed debugging, we advocate the systematic capture and reuse of debugging knowledge, much of which is currently wasted. The core challenge here is how to search for similar bugs. To tackle this problem, we exploit semantic bug information in the form of execution traces, which precisely capture bug semantics. This paper introduces novel tool and language support for semantically querying and analyzing bugs. We describe OSCILLOSCOPE, an Eclipse plugin, that uses a bug trace to exhaustively search its database for similar bugs and return their bug reports. OSCILLOSCOPE displays the traces of the bugs it returns against the trace of the target bug, so a developer can visually examine the quality of the matches. OSCILLOSCOPE rests on our bug query language (BQL), a flexible query language over traces. To realize OSCILLOSCOPE, we developed an open infrastructure that consists of a trace collection engine, BQL, a Hadoop-based query engine for BQL, a trace-indexed bug database, as well as a web-based frontend. OSCILLOSCOPE records and uploads bug traces to its infrastructure; it does so automatically when a JUnit test fails. We evaluated OSCILLOSCOPE on bugs collected from popular open-source projects. We show that OSCILLOSCOPE accurately and efficiently finds similar bugs, some of which could have been immediately used to fix open bugs.

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532512.3535226
Chen HDamevski KShepherd DKraft N(2019)Modeling hierarchical usage context for software exceptions based on interaction dataAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-019-00265-3Online publication date: 13-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-019-00265-3
Schulz SBockisch CTilevich EMössenböck H(2018)A blast from the pastProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Managed Languages & Runtimes10.1145/3237009.3237012(1-13)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2018
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Index Terms

Reusing debugging knowledge via trace-based bug search
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Formal language definitions
2. Theory of computation
  1. Formal languages and automata theory

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '12: Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications

October 2012

1052 pages

ISBN:9781450315616

DOI:10.1145/2384616

General Chair:
Gary T. Leavens
University of Central Florida
,
Program Chair:
Matthew B. Dwyer
University of Nebraska - Lincoln

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 47, Issue 10
OOPSLA '12
October 2012
1011 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2398857
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 October 2012

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SPLASH '12: Conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 19 - 26, 2012

Arizona, Tucson, USA

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Cited By

Krebs ERein PHirschfeld R(2022)Example MiningCompanion Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming10.1145/3532512.3535226(60-66)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532512.3535226
Chen HDamevski KShepherd DKraft N(2019)Modeling hierarchical usage context for software exceptions based on interaction dataAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-019-00265-3Online publication date: 13-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-019-00265-3
Schulz SBockisch CTilevich EMössenböck H(2018)A blast from the pastProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Managed Languages & Runtimes10.1145/3237009.3237012(1-13)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3237009.3237012
Rahman MRoy CLeavens GGarcia APăsăreanu C(2018)Improving IR-based bug localization with context-aware query reformulationProceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3236024.3236065(621-632)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236024.3236065
Schulz S(2017)Back-In-Time EvaluationCompanion Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming10.1145/3079368.3079373(1-2)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3079368.3079373
Pham LSun JThi LWang JPeng X(2017)Learning Likely Invariants to Explain Why a Program Fails2017 22nd International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (ICECCS)10.1109/ICECCS.2017.12(70-79)Online publication date: Nov-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECCS.2017.12
Azadmanesh MHauswirth MStansifer RKrall A(2015)BLASTProceedings of the Principles and Practices of Programming on The Java Platform10.1145/2807426.2807439(152-158)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2807426.2807439
Chen FKim SDi Nitto EHarman MHeymans P(2015)Crowd debuggingProceedings of the 2015 10th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/2786805.2786819(320-332)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2786805.2786819
Barr EMarron M(2014)TardisACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2714064.266020949:10(67-82)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2714064.2660209
Barr EMarron MBlack AMillstein T(2014)TardisProceedings of the 2014 ACM International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages & Applications10.1145/2660193.2660209(67-82)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2660193.2660209
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