A novel approach for mutant diversity-based fault localization: DAM-FL

摘要

Locating faults after detecting is one of the important steps in software debugging. For fault localization, many approaches are there. Mutant based approaches are also available for fault localization and they have performed better compared to statement based approaches. In the present paper, a new mutant based fault localization approach named "DAM-FL" is proposed which is based on diversity aware mutation adequacy criterion. It uses diversified or distinguished mutants and their respective test suites for locating faults. Experiments on projects of defects4j repository show that for single line faults, proposed approach with a reduced number of mutants performs better or gives similar results compared to the traditional mutant based fault localization approach. For multi-line faults, it can be said that the proposed approach is equivalent to the traditional approaches.