An Analysis on the Negative Effect of Multiple-Faults for Spectrum-Based Fault Localization

This paper aims to investigate the negative effects of multiple-faults on spectrum-based fault localization (SBFL). Previously, researchers validated the fact that the occurrence of multiple-faults could have a significant negative impact on fault localization. However, a very little current research addresses the degree of these impacts through a systemic analysis. Furthermore, the fundamental causes underlying that negative impact have not been investigated and are not fully understood. We conducted experiments on fourteen real-life open source programs to explore and possibly solve these problems. Our results indicate that: 1) although multiple-faults generally do have a negative impact on fault localization, different fault localizations displayed various levels of robustness against that negative impact; 2) restoring pass/fail fault interactions only has a modest effect on that negative impact; 3) our investigation of twelve Fault Localization Interactions (FLI) shows that there is a dominant FLI-1 interaction in multiple-fault programs which should be responsible for that negative impact; 4) restoring FLI-1 can significantly improve the performance of both SBFL and parallel debugging techniques; and 5) furthermore, this paper practically validated the revised Kendall Tau distance as an efficient measure to help locate test cases, which have triggered FLI-1. Based on the revised Kendall Tau distance, a fast search algorithm has been suggested to locate FLI-1 test cases. It is expected that this paper can provide some insight into the fundamental causes of multiple-faults’ negative impact on fault localization and drive the development of more efficient fault localization techniques to improve the identification and handling of multiple-faults.