Delta debugging: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:24, 23 July 2015

Revision as of 09:18, 18 August 2015

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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 developpeddeveloped 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>

In practice, the Delta Debugging algorithm builds on [[unit testing]] to isolate 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.