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The Design of Bug Fixes

The Design of Bug Fixes. Emerson Murphy-Hill North Carolina State University Thomas Zimmermann, Christian Bird, and Nachiappan Nagappan Microsoft Research , USA ICSE 2013. About the paper. Empirical study performed in Microsoft Investigated two research questions:

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The Design of Bug Fixes

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  1. The Design of Bug Fixes Emerson Murphy-Hill North Carolina State University Thomas Zimmermann, Christian Bird, and NachiappanNagappan Microsoft Research , USA ICSE 2013

  2. About the paper • Empirical study performed in Microsoft • Investigated two research questions: • What are the different ways that bugs can be fixed? (Design space) • What factors influence which fix an engineer chooses? (Decisions / Navigating design space) • Contribution • The first systematic characterization of the design of bug fixes

  3. Overview

  4. Methodology • 1. Opportunistic Interviews • Randomly went to 4 product groups • Asked 8 engineers per group about his last fixed bug for 10-15 min

  5. Methodology • 2. Firehouse Interviews • Observe a just-completed fix in a bug tracker • “Rush to the scene” • 8 engineers from a different product group

  6. Methodology (cont.) • 3. Triage Meetings • 6 meetings • Little data could be gathered: Lack of context • 4. Survey • Multiple-choice, estimated 15-20 minutes • 324 out of 2000 responsed (16%)

  7. Results: Design Space

  8. Results: Design Space • Data propagation • Layered infrastructure with four layers, top most being the UI • Top: expecting megabytes • Bottom: only accept kilobytes

  9. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Error Surfacing • A crash when a user is deleting file • Engineer: catch exception and handle it • Whether or not to notify the user

  10. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Behavioral Alternatives • In a kind of mobile device • When first load, back botton can not work simultaneously with other features • Choose a certain behavior

  11. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Functionality Removal • Rather than fixing, just remove the whole feature • 75% of respondents said they had removed features from their software to fix bugs in the past

  12. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Refactoring

  13. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Internal vsExternal • A testing framework • Changing the framework (internal) • Changing other team’s code (external)

  14. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Accuracy • A web browser is not printing well • Accurate: print driver retrieve the fonts • Less accurate: use a heuristic to produce a better but not optimal printing

  15. Results: Design Space (cont.) • Hardcoding • Receive database queries, with some queries malformed • Hardcoded, using a fixed set of queries

  16. Results: Navigating the Design Space

  17. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • Risk Management by Development Phase

  18. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • Risk Management by Development Phase

  19. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • Interface Breakage

  20. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • Consistency

  21. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • User Behavior

  22. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • User Behavior

  23. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • Cause Understanding • 18% indicated that they have not had “time to figure out why the bug occurred”

  24. Results: Navigating the Design Space (cont.) • Social Factors

  25. Implications • Additional Factors in Bug Prediction and Localization • Limits of Bug Prediction and Localization • Refactoring while Fixing Bugs • Usage Analytics • Fix Reconsideration

  26. Limitations • Generalizability beyond the population • Expectancy bias • Memory bias • Unable to collect contextual information • Misunderstanding

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