CRII: SHF: General, Precise and Accurate Fault Localization

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Locating faults is one of the (if not the) most expensive tasks in softwaredevelopment. Given the complexity of software systems, identifying a fault islike searching for a needle in a haystack. This project explores a generalapproach that will aid programmers in locating faults in software systems. Thegoal is to develop a methodology for pinpointing at the exact fault locationsin a program, based on evidences collected from program executions. Thisproject can greatly reduce software development cost. More broadly, thisproject can advance the scientific knowledge of fault localization in general.Advances that aid programmer in debugging will also make computer scienceeducation more accessible to the public.The project explores novel techniques for general, precise and accurate faultlocalization. The new method is applicable to various representations ofprogram execution with different granularities, using a novel execution tracemodel. Based on probabilistic inference, it accurately pinpoints at the mostlikely fault locations in a program, rather than reporting every location thatmight contribute to a failure, or reporting a code fragment that is highlycorrelated with failures. The practicality of this approach will bedemonstrated on complex real-world systems.