Spectrum-based Fault Localization Techniques Application on Multiple-Fault Programs: A Review

Software fault localization is one of the most tedious and costly activities in program debugging in the endeavor to identify faults locations in a software program. In this paper, the studies that used spectrum-based fault localization (SBFL) techniques that makes use of different multiple fault localization debugging methods such as one-bug-at-a-time (OBA) debugging, parallel debugging, and simultaneous debugging in localizing multiple faults are classified and critically analyzed in order to extensively discuss the current research trends, issues, and challenges in this field of study. The outcome strongly shows that there is a high utilization of OBA debugging method, poor fault isolation accuracy, and dominant use of artificial faults that limit the existing techniques applicability in the software industry.

Using Multi-Core to Debug Interactive Applications

Instrumentation technology has been widely used in debugging interactive applications, such as interactive games and virtual reality. Debug codes are instrumented into a target program in order to collect run-time information. Although instrumentation provides detail information of the target program behavior, it can significantly prolong execution time, change program behavior and lead to incorrect debugging results, especially for time dependent and real-time applications. This paper aims to design a scalable parallel debugging mechanism to reduce instrumentation overhead while collecting detail run-time information. We design a new synchronization mechanism of instrumentation, named MDM, which uses multiple buffers to process debug messages. Also, a binding mechanism is used to specify the relationship between the target program, helper threads and cores. We conduct a case study of augmented reality interactive games on an Intel Core i7-2600 processor with Linux 2.6.38. Compared to existing methods, MDM can reduce instrumentation overhead by up to 19%.