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Article

HOLMES: Effective statistical debugging via efficient path profiling

Authors:

Trishul M. Chilimbi,

Aditya V. Nori,

Kapil VaswaniAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '09: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering

Pages 34 - 44

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2009.5070506

Published: 16 May 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Statistical debugging aims to automate the process of isolating bugs by profiling several runs of the program and using statistical analysis to pinpoint the likely causes of failure. In this paper, we investigate the impact of using richer program profiles such as path profiles on the effectiveness of bug isolation. We describe a statistical debugging tool called HOLMES that isolates bugs by finding paths that correlate with failure. We also present an adaptive version of HOLMES that uses iterative, bug-directed profiling to lower execution time and space overheads. We evaluate HOLMES using programs from the SIR benchmark suite and some large, real-world applications. Our results indicate that path profiles can help isolate bugs more precisely by providing more information about the context in which bugs occur. Moreover, bug-directed profiling can efficiently isolate bugs with low overheads, providing a scalable and accurate alternative to sparse random sampling.

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Cited By

Lee CKim DKim GLee SKim TShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)LTA: Control-Driven UAV Testing and Bug Localization with Flight Record DecompositionProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699350(450-463)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699350
Gerten MLathrop JCohen MChristakis MPradel M(2024)Traceback: A Fault Localization Technique for Molecular ProgramsProceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3650212.3652138(415-427)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3650212.3652138
Zhang PWang YLiu XLu ZYang YLi YChen LWang ZSun CYu XZhou Y(2023)Assessing Effectiveness of Test Suites: What Do We Know and What Should We Do?ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/363571333:4(1-32)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635713
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Index Terms

HOLMES: Effective statistical debugging via efficient path profiling
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Reliability
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Software reliability

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '09: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering

May 2009

643 pages

ISBN:9781424434534

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 16 May 2009

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Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Lee CKim DKim GLee SKim TShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)LTA: Control-Driven UAV Testing and Bug Localization with Flight Record DecompositionProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699350(450-463)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699350
Gerten MLathrop JCohen MChristakis MPradel M(2024)Traceback: A Fault Localization Technique for Molecular ProgramsProceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3650212.3652138(415-427)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3650212.3652138
Zhang PWang YLiu XLu ZYang YLi YChen LWang ZSun CYu XZhou Y(2023)Assessing Effectiveness of Test Suites: What Do We Know and What Should We Do?ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/363571333:4(1-32)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635713
Jiang JWang YChen JLv DLiu M(2023)Variable-based Fault Localization via Enhanced Decision TreeACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/362474133:2(1-32)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3624741
Liu XYang CLi DZhou YLi SChen JChen Z(2023)Adonis: Practical and Efficient Control Flow Recovery through OS-level TracesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/360718733:1(1-27)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607187
Zhang YHu YLi HShi WNing ZLuo XZhang FJust RFraser G(2023)Alligator in Vest: A Practical Failure-Diagnosis Framework via Arm Hardware FeaturesProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3597926.3598106(917-928)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2023
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Zuo GMa JQuinn AKasikci BAamodt TJerger NSwift M(2023)Vidi: Record Replay for Reconfigurable HardwareProceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 310.1145/3582016.3582040(806-820)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2023
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Lim HDebray SVerbrugge CLhoták OShen X(2023)Automatically Localizing Dynamic Code Generation Bugs in JIT Compiler Back-EndProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Compiler Construction10.1145/3578360.3580260(145-155)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2023
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Jeong DJung MLee YLee BShin IKwon YFedorova ANarayanan DDi Luna GQuerzoni L(2023)Diagnosing Kernel Concurrency Failures with AITIAProceedings of the Eighteenth European Conference on Computer Systems10.1145/3552326.3567486(94-110)Online publication date: 8-May-2023
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Li XLiu SFeng RMeng GXie XChen KLiu Y(2022)TransRepair: Context-aware Program Repair for Compilation ErrorsProceedings of the 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3551349.3560422(1-13)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2022
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