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{{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>.
'''Delta Debugging''' automates the scientific method of [[debugging]]. The Delta Debugging algorithm isolates failure causes automatically - by systematically narrowing down failure-inducing circumstances until a minimal set remains. Delta Debugging 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).▼
In practice, the Delta Debugging algorithm builds on [[unit test]] to isolates 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 Delta Debugging 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.
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Later, some software development tools have been inspired by Delta Debugging, such as the bisect commands of [[revision control]] systems (eg, git-bisect, svn-bisect, hg-bisect, etc.).
== Software ==
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* 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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