PatchNet demonstrates a promising prospect of using machine learning to classify Linux kernel patches. It identifies bug-fixing patches, which should be back ported to long-term stable versions, from all patches in the mainline Linux kernel. This tool may greatly lighten the burden and reduce the omission of picking patches for maintainers. However, there are still some obstacles for engineering applications. We present PTracer, a Linux kernel patch trace bot based on an improved PatchNet. PTracer continuously monitors new patches in the git repository of the mainline Linux kernel, filters out unconcerned ones, classifies the rest as bug-fixing or non bug-fixing patches, and report bug-fixing patches to kernel experts of commercial operating systems. As a part of PTracer, kernel experts’ feedback information is collected and used to retrain the neural network periodically for improving performance. We use the patches in February 2019 of the mainline Linux kernel to perform the test. As a result, PTracer recommended 151 patches to CGEL kernel experts out of 5,142, 102 of which were accepted. Our PTracer is the first patch trace bot successfully applied to a commercial operating system and has the advantage of improving software quality and saving labor cost.
Combining Spectrum-Based Fault Localization and Statistical Debugging: An Empirical Study Research Papers
Program debugging is a time-consuming task, and researchers have proposed different kinds of automatic fault localization techniques to mitigate the burden of manual debugging. Among these techniques, two popular families are spectrum-based fault localization (SBFL) and statistical debugging (SD), both localizing faults by collecting statistical information at runtime. Though the ideas are similar, the two families have been developed independently and their combinations have not been systematically explored.
In this paper we perform a systematical empirical study on the combination of SBFL and SD. We first build a unified model of the two techniques, and systematically explore four types of variations, different predicates, different risk evaluation formulas, different granularities of data collection, and different methods of combining suspicious scores.
Our study leads to several findings. First, most of the effectiveness of the combined approach contributed by a simple type of predicates: branch conditions. Second, the risk evaluation formulas of SBFL significantly outperform that of SD. Third, fine-grained data collection significantly outperforms coarse-grained data collection with a little extra execution overhead. Fourth, a linear combination of SBFL and SD predicates outperforms both individual approaches.
According to our empirical study, we propose a new fault localization approach, PREDFL (Predicate-based Fault Localization), with the best configuration for each dimension under the unified model. Then, we explore its complementarity to existing techniques by integrating PREDFL with a state-of-the-art fault localization framework. The experimental results show that PREDFL can further improve the effectiveness of state-of-the-art fault localization techniques. More concretely, integrating PREDFL results in an up to 20.8% improvement w.r.t the faults successfully located at Top-1, which reveals that PREDFL complements existing techniques.