Theoretical Aspects of Software Fault Localization
Xiaoyuan Xie, W. Eric Wong · 2023
This chapter focuses on the theoretical studies on spectrum-based fault localization (SBFL). In the practice of SBFL, a tie-breaking scheme is required to determine the order of the statements with identical risk values, and such a scheme is also required in our theoretical analysis. Similar to having threats to validity in empirical studies, people also have concerns about adopting assumptions in the theoretical analysis. For the existence of noise from omission faults, some people use Siemens Suite, which contains omission faults, while others use various strategies to handle this case by considering the preceding or succeeding statement of the missing statement as the “faulty statement”. Since all proofs of the theoretical analysis are explicitly stated, an independent verification for the results of the theoretical analysis can be easily conducted.