Abstract
This paper investigates the negative effects of soft assertion on the accuracy of Spectrum-based Fault Localization (SBFL). Soft assertion is a kind of test assertion which continues test case execution even after an assertion failure occurs. In general, the execution path becomes longer if the test case fails by a soft assertion. Hence, soft assertion will decrease the accuracy of SBFL which leverages the execution path of failed tests. In this study, we call the change of execution path due to soft assertion as path pollution. Our experimental results show that soft assertion actually reduces the accuracy of SBFL in 35% of faults.
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Notes
- 1.
The total sum of the individual usage rates is 19.4%. However, since some projects use multiple libraries, the percentage of unique projects using soft assertion is 13.2%.
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Acknowledgment
This research was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Japan (Grant Number: JP21H04877, JP20H04166, JP21K18302, and JP21K11829).
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Mihara, K., Matsumoto, S., Kusumoto, S. (2024). The Effects of Soft Assertion on Spectrum-Based Fault Localization. In: Kadgien, R., Jedlitschka, A., Janes, A., Lenarduzzi, V., Li, X. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14483. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49266-2_26
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