Optimising Spectrum Based Fault Localisation for Single Fault Programs Using Specifications

David Landsberg, Youcheng Sun, Daniel Kroening

Abstract: Spectrum based fault localisation determines how suspicious a line of code is with respect to being faulty as a function of a given test suite. Outstanding problems include identifying properties that the test suite should satisfy in order to improve fault localisation effectiveness subject to a given measure, and developing methods that generate these test suites efficiently. We address these problems as follows. First, when single bug optimal measures are being used with a single-fault program, we identify a formal property that the test suite should satisfy in order to optimise fault localisation. Second, we introduce a new method which generates test data that satisfies this property. Finally, we empirically demonstrate the utility of our implementation at fault localisation on sv-comp benchmarks and the tcas program, demonstrating that test suites can be generated in almost a second with a fault identified after inspecting under 1% of the program.