Abstract
In this paper, software patches modifying a single line (aka 1-edit degree patches) of buggy Java open-source projects have been generated automatically using computational search and experimentally evaluated. We carried out the presumably largest to date experiment related to 1-edit degree patches, consisting of almost 27,000 computational jobs upper bounded with 107,000 computational hours. Our experiments show the benefits and drawbacks of such kind of patches. In particular, the search space size has been shown to be reduced by several orders of magnitude. The volume of tests that can be filtered out without any negative impact while generating 1-edit degree patches has been increased by about 97%.
Finally, the effectiveness of finding 1-edit plausible patches is compared with multi-line plausible patches found with state-of-the-art syntax-based Automatic Program Repair tools. It is shown that despite patching fewer bugs in total, 1-edit degree patches have potential to patch some extra bugs.
Finally, the effectiveness of finding 1-edit plausible patches is compared with multi-line plausible patches found with state-of-the-art syntax-based Automatic Program Repair tools. It is shown that despite patching fewer bugs in total, 1-edit degree patches have potential to patch some extra bugs.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 20 Mar 2020 |