Computing Reviews
Today's Issue Hot Topics Search Browse Recommended My Account Log In
Review Help
Search
Automatic software repair: a bibliography
Monperrus M. ACM Computing Surveys51 (1):1-24,2018.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Nov 13 2019

There is a well-known saying in Silicon Valley about the omnipresence of programmable computers in our everyday life: software is eating the world, but unfortunately each bite comes with bugs. Such software can even be a threat to user safety, and bugs can even kill people. There are millions of bugs in software, and more are yet to come from not-yet-released software. Fortunately, there are some techniques that tackle the problem by providing solutions to the unintended execution of a computer program.

This paper presents an annotated bibliography of two main areas of automatic software repair: behavioral repair (that is, modifying the program code) and state repair (modifying the execution state at runtime). The paper also tackles techniques that cannot yet be considered automatic software repair, but can help the developer to build code that eases this task. Typical behavioral repair techniques are evaluating mutations, static analysis, and the symbolic execution of portions of code through the use of satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) solvers. In state repair, the aim is to change the state of the program under repair, for example, by restarting it (in whole or even partial reboots of microcomponents) or by slightly modifying the input.

This paper is a very interesting read for those who are new to the field because the survey contains both historical and new results. Moreover, it is of interest to critical software developers and project managers who want to enhance the set of tools available to produce almost-bug-free components.

Reviewer:  Massimiliano Masi Review #: CR146771 (2003-0052)
Bookmark and Share
  Featured Reviewer  
 
Testing And Debugging (D.2.5 )
 
 
Automatic Programming (I.2.2 )
 
Would you recommend this review?
yes
no
Other reviews under "Testing And Debugging": Date
Software defect removal
Dunn R., McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1984. Type: Book (9789780070183131)
Mar 1 1985
On the optimum checkpoint selection problem
Toueg S., Babaoglu O. SIAM Journal on Computing 13(3): 630-649, 1984. Type: Article
Mar 1 1985
Software testing management
Royer T., Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1993. Type: Book (9780135329870)
Mar 1 1994
more...

E-Mail This Printer-Friendly
Send Your Comments
Contact Us
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.   Copyright 1999-2024 ThinkLoud®
Terms of Use
| Privacy Policy