Practical Improvements to the Minimizing Delta Debugging Algorithm

Renáta Hodován, Ákos Kiss

2016

Abstract

The first step in dealing with an input that triggers a fault in a software is simplifying it as much and as automatically as possible, since a minimal test case can ensure the efficient use of human developer resources. The well-known minimizing Delta Debugging algorithm is widely used for automated test case simplification but even its last published revision is more than a decade old. Thus, in this paper, we investigate how it performs nowadays, especially (but not exclusively) focusing on its parallelization potential. We present new improvement ideas, give algorithm variants formally and in pseudo-code, and evaluate them in a large-scale experiment of more than 1000 test minimization sessions featuring real test cases. Our results show that with the help of the proposed improvements, Delta Debugging needs only one-fourth to one-fifth of the original execution time to reach 1-minimal results.

References

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Hodován R. and Kiss Á. (2016). Practical Improvements to the Minimizing Delta Debugging Algorithm . In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Software Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT-EA, (ICSOFT 2016) ISBN 978-989-758-194-6, pages 241-248. DOI: 10.5220/0005988602410248


in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsoft-ea16,
author={Renáta Hodován and Ákos Kiss},
title={Practical Improvements to the Minimizing Delta Debugging Algorithm},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Software Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT-EA, (ICSOFT 2016)},
year={2016},
pages={241-248},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005988602410248},
isbn={978-989-758-194-6},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Software Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT-EA, (ICSOFT 2016)
TI - Practical Improvements to the Minimizing Delta Debugging Algorithm
SN - 978-989-758-194-6
AU - Hodován R.
AU - Kiss Á.
PY - 2016
SP - 241
EP - 248
DO - 10.5220/0005988602410248