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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 developed 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 developed 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 Delta Debugging,delta suchdebugging 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://delta.tigris.org/ Delta] - a computer program to minimize "interesting" files subject to a test of their interestingness

* [[Bisection (software engineering)]]

* [https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/dd/DD.py DD.py] - a Python implementation of Delta Debugging; also see its [https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/dd/ddusage.php3 tutorial]

* [[Program slicing]]

* [http://www.squarefree.com/lithium/using.html Lithium] - a Python implementation of an enhanced Delta Debugging algorithm

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

** DDinput - Failure-Inducing Input

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

** DDstate - Failure-Inducing States

* [https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/testing/xmlmate/ XMLmate]<ref>{{cite news|title=Detecting Software Errors via Genetic Algorithms|url=http://www.pddnet.com/news/2014/03/detecting-software-errors-genetic-algorithms|accessdate=22 July 2015|date=2014-03-05}}</ref>

* [https://github.com/eschulte/delta-debug Common Lisp implementation]

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

==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 />

==Related==

* [[Bisection (software engineering)]]

* [[Program slicing]]

==External links==

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

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

[[Category:Debuggers]]

[[Category:DebuggersDebugging]]

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