Automatic bug fixing: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:44, 29 September 2016

Revision as of 06:28, 30 September 2016

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'''Automatic bug-fixing''' is the automatic [[Patch (computing)|repair]] of [[software bug]]s without the intervention of a human programmer

.<ref>Patching program errors (CACM 2008) {{DOI|10.1145/1409360.1409381}}</ref> <ref>Automated Patching Techniques: The Fix Is In (CACM 2010) {{DOI|10.1145/1735223.1735248}}</ref>. It is also commonly referred to as ''automatic patch generation'', ''automatic bug repair'', or ''automatic program repair''. The typical goal of such techniques is to automatically generate a correct [[Patch (computing) |patch]] to eliminate a [[software bug | bug]] in a software program without causing [[software regression]].

Techniques for automatic bug-fixing are still in their infancy, but are broadly divided into two camps depending on the way the proposed repair or patch is evaluated: those based on [[Formal verification|formal analysis]], and those that use a generate-and-validate [[search-based software engineering | search-based]] approach. The former relies on the availability of [[formal specification]] of the correct behavior of a program, uses [[program synthesis]] techniques to synthesize a patch, and then verifies the patched program satisfying the specification; the latter relies on the availability of a [[test suite]] or similar artifact, generates a search space of candidate patches, uses [[automated testing]] techniques to validate each candidate patch one by one, and collects validated patches that pass the test suite.

==Techniques using formal verification==