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'''Delta Debuggingdebugging''' is a methodology to automate the [[debugging]] of programs using a scientific approach of hypothesis-trial-result loop. This methodology was first developpeddeveloped by Andreas Zeller of the Saarland University in 1999.<ref>{{cite bookconference |last1=Zeller |first1=Andreas |book-title=Software Engineering — ESEC/FSE '99 |volume=1687 |pages=253–267 |title=Yesterday, my program worked. Today, it does not. Why?|date=1999 |publisher=Springer Berlin|doi=10.1007/3-540-48166-4_16 Heidelberg|editionseries=SoftwareLecture Engineering—ESEC/FSE’99Notes in Computer Science |isbn=978-3-540-66538-0}}</ref>.

{{Portal|Software Testing}}

'''Delta Debugging''' is a methodology to automate the [[debugging]] of programs using a scientific approach of hypothesis-trial-result loop. This methodology was first developped by Andreas Zeller of the Saarland University in 1999<ref>{{cite book|last1=Zeller|first1=Andreas|title=Yesterday, my program worked. Today, it does not. Why?|date=1999|publisher=Springer Berlin Heidelberg|edition=Software Engineering—ESEC/FSE’99}}</ref>.

InThe practice,delta the Delta Debuggingdebugging algorithm builds on [[unit testing]] to isolateisolates failure causes automatically - by systematically narrowing down failure-inducing circumstances until a minimal set remains. For example, if you can supply a test case that will produce the bug you are looking for, then you can feed that to the Deltadelta Debuggingdebugging algorithm, which will then simply try to trim useless functions and lines of code that are not needed to reproduce the bug, until a 1-minimal program is found.

Delta Debuggingdebugging has been applied to isolate failure-inducing program input (e.g. an HTML page that makes a Web browser fail), failure-inducing user interaction (e.g. the keystrokes that make a program crash), or failure-inducing changes to the program code (e.g. after a failing regression test).

Later, some softwareSoftware development tools have been inspired by Deltadelta Debugging,debugging such asinclude the [[Bisection (software engineering)|bisect commands]] of [[revision control]] systems (ege.g., git-bisect, svn-bisect, hg-bisect, etc.), which, instead of working on the program's code, apply the delta debugging methodology on the code history by comparing various versions until the faulty change is found.

==See Software also==

* [http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/askigor/downloads/ Igor - command line tool]

* [[Bisection (software engineering)]]

* [http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/eclipse/ Eclipse Plug-Ins]

* [[Program slicing]]

** DDinput - Failure-Inducing Input

** [http://ddchange.martin-burger.de/ DDchange] - Failure-Inducing Changes

** DDstate - Failure-Inducing States

* [https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/dd/DD.py DD.py] - a Python implementation of Delta Debugging

==References==

* Andreas Zeller: <cite>Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging</cite>, Morgan Kaufmann, ISBN 1-55860-866-4

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzRqd4YeLlM Learning from Code History] A presentation at Google Tech Talk from the original inventor of the Delta Debugging

<references />

==External links==

*[http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/dd/ Delta Debugging project] - extensive collection of links to delta debugging tools and methods

*[http://delta.tigris.org/ Delta] - a computer program to minimize "interesting" files subject to a test of their interestingness

*[https://www.udacity.com/course/software-debugging--cs259 Udacity course on Software Debugging by Andreas Zeller]

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[[Category:DebuggersDebugging]]