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Toward an understanding of bug fix patterns

Authors:

E. James Whitehead, Jr.Authors Info & Claims

Empirical Software Engineering, Volume 14, Issue 3

Pages 286 - 315

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-008-9077-5

Published: 01 June 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Twenty-seven automatically extractable bug fix patterns are defined using the syntax components and context of the source code involved in bug fix changes. Bug fix patterns are extracted from the configuration management repositories of seven open source projects, all written in Java (Eclipse, Columba, JEdit, Scarab, ArgoUML, Lucene, and MegaMek). Defined bug fix patterns cover 45.7% to 63.3% of the total bug fix hunk pairs in these projects. The frequency of occurrence of each bug fix pattern is computed across all projects. The most common individual patterns are MC-DAP (method call with different actual parameter values) at 14.9---25.5%, IF-CC (change in if conditional) at 5.6---18.6%, and AS-CE (change of assignment expression) at 6.0---14.2%. A correlation analysis on the extracted pattern instances on the seven projects shows that six have very similar bug fix pattern frequencies. Analysis of if conditional bug fix sub-patterns shows a trend towards increasing conditional complexity in if conditional fixes. Analysis of five developers in the Eclipse projects shows overall consistency with project-level bug fix pattern frequencies, as well as distinct variations among developers in their rates of producing various bug patterns. Overall, data in the paper suggest that developers have difficulty with specific code situations at surprisingly consistent rates. There appear to be broad mechanisms causing the injection of bugs that are largely independent of the type of software being produced.

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Cited By

Huang KXu ZYang SSun HLi XYan ZZhang Y(2024)Evolving Paradigms in Automated Program Repair: Taxonomy, Challenges, and OpportunitiesACM Computing Surveys10.1145/369645057:2(1-43)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2024
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Toward an understanding of bug fix patterns
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis

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Published In

cover image Empirical Software Engineering

Empirical Software Engineering Volume 14, Issue 3

June 2009

113 pages

ISSN:1382-3256

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Copyright © Copyright © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Publisher

Kluwer Academic Publishers

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 June 2009

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Cited By

Huang KXu ZYang SSun HLi XYan ZZhang Y(2024)Evolving Paradigms in Automated Program Repair: Taxonomy, Challenges, and OpportunitiesACM Computing Surveys10.1145/369645057:2(1-43)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3696450
Marinho E(2024)Characterizing Resource Interaction Failures in Mobile ApplicationsProceedings of the 28th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference10.1145/3646548.3676601(11-16)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646548.3676601
Yang WSong LXue YRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)Rust-lancet: Automated Ownership-Rule-Violation Fixing with Behavior PreservationProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639103(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3639103
Robati Shirzad MLam P(2024)A study of common bug fix patterns in RustEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10437-129:2Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-023-10437-1
Carneiro GFerreira JRamalho FMassoni T(2023)Similar Bug Reports Recommendation System using BERTProceedings of the XXXVII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3613372.3613396(378-387)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
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Liu KZhang JLi LKoyuncu AKim DGe CLiu ZKlein JBissyandé T(2023)Reliable Fix Patterns Inferred from Static Checkers for Automated Program RepairACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/357963732:4(1-38)Online publication date: 26-May-2023
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Grazia LBredl PPradel M(2023)DiffSearch: A Scalable and Precise Search Engine for Code ChangesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.321885949:4(2366-2380)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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Jangali MTang YAlexandersson NLeitner PYang JShang W(2023)Automated Generation and Evaluation of JMH Microbenchmark Suites From Unit TestsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.318800549:4(1704-1725)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
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Meng XWang XZhang HSun HLiu XHu CGrundy JPollock LPenta M(2023)Template-Based Neural Program RepairProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00127(1456-1468)Online publication date: 14-May-2023
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