SHF: Small: Promoting Efficient Debugging and High-Quality Software through Contextual Understanding of Faults

软件缺陷或缺陷是软件开发和社会中的一个重要问题。处理由这些缺陷引起的故障的成本是巨大的。一旦通过失败的测试用例或由于使用中的失败而识别了软件故障，识别导致该故障的缺陷以及如何修复它可能是困难和耗时的。这项研究将结合程序分析和失败运行的信息来帮助理解故障的背景，并为开发人员提供可视化和其他信息，帮助他们理解故障和修复软件。这项工作的技术重点包括新颖的软件分析、软件模型、软件开发界面和可视化，以支持软件开发、理解和故障修复。这些技术捕获并利用关于程序及其执行的静态和动态信息来对软件元素及其功能之间的关系进行建模。当试图理解软件故障的性质和背景时，可以使用这些混合的静态/动态模型作为探索程序的基础，以便可以有效和高效地修复它们。这些软件模型利用了轻量级和常见的动态信息，从而使它们变得实用，并为近期采用做好了准备。界面和可视化以一种揭示软件内部交互的方式向软件开发人员呈现程序，从而使他们能够理解比目前可能的更大、更复杂的系统。因此，这项研究将使软件开发行业能够更好地了解和修复软件故障，从而生产出更高质量的软件，从而造福于整个社会。

Software defects, or bugs, are a significant issue in software development and society. The cost of dealing with the faults caused by these defects is significant. Once a software fault has been identified, either by a failing test case or due to a failure in use, it can be difficult and time consuming to identify the defect responsible for the fault and how to repair it. This research will combine information from analysis of the program and the failing run to help understand the context of the fault, and provide a developer with visualizations and other information to help them understand the fault and repair the software.The technical focus of this work consists of novel software analyses, software models, and software-development interfaces and visualizations to support software development, comprehension, and fault repair. These techniques capture and utilize static and dynamic information about the program and its execution to model relations among software elements and their functionality. These hybrid static/dynamic models can be used as the basis for the exploration of a program when attempting to understand the nature and context of software faults so that they may be effectively and efficiently repaired. These software models utilize lightweight and commonplace dynamic information, thus making them practical and ready for near-term adoption. The interfaces and visualizations present the program to software developers in a way to reveal interactions within software, thus allowing them to comprehend larger and more complex systems than is currently possible. As such, the research will enable software-development industry to better understand and repair software faults, thus producing higher quality software, which will benefit society at large.