A closer look at real-world patches

Kui Liu, Dongsun Kim, Anil Koyuncu, Li Li, Tegawende F. Bissyande, Yves Le Traon

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

46 Scopus citations

Abstract

Bug fixing is a time-consuming and tedious task. To reduce the manual efforts in bug fixing, researchers have presented automated approaches to software repair. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that the state-of-The-Art techniques in automated repair tend to generate patches only for a small number of bugs even with quality issues (e.g., incorrect behavior and nonsensical changes). To improve automated program repair (APR) techniques, the community should deepen its knowledge on repair actions from real-world patches since most of the techniques rely on patches written by human developers. Previous investigations on real-world patches are limited to statement level that is not sufficiently fine-grained to build this knowledge. In this work, we contribute to building this knowledge via a systematic and fine-grained study of 16,450 bug fix commits from seven Java open-source projects. We find that there are opportunities for APR techniques to improve their effectiveness by looking at code elements that have not yet been investigated. We also discuss nine insights into tuning automated repair tools. For example, a small number of statement and expression types are recurrently impacted by real-world patches, and expression-level granularity could reduce search space of finding fix ingredients, where previous studies never explored.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, ICSME 2018
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages275-286
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781538678701
DOIs
StatePublished - 9 Nov 2018
Event34th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, ICSME 2018 - Madrid, Spain
Duration: 23 Sep 201829 Sep 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, ICSME 2018

Conference

Conference34th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, ICSME 2018
Country/TerritorySpain
CityMadrid
Period23/09/1829/09/18

Keywords

  • Abstract syntax tree
  • Fix pattern
  • Program patch

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A closer look at real-world patches'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this