Mining Crash Fix Patterns

TL;DR

This paper analyzes bug fix histories from the Eclipse project to identify common fix patterns for different exception types, revealing that most bugs can be addressed by a small set of fix types, which can improve bug fixing efficiency.

Contribution

It provides an empirical study of bug fix patterns in a large, well-maintained open source project, identifying a limited set of common fix types for various exceptions.

Findings

Most exceptions can be fixed with fewer than ten fix types.

A small set of fix patterns can address the majority of bugs.

Bug fixing can be streamlined by focusing on common fix patterns.

Abstract

During the life cycle of software development, developers have to fix different kinds of bugs reported by testers or end users. The efficiency and effectiveness of fixing bugs have a huge impact on the reliability of the software as well as the productivity of the development team. Software companies usually spend a large amount of money and human resources on the testing and bug fixing departments. As a result, a better and more reliable way to fix bugs is highly desired by them. In order to achieve such goal, in depth studies on the characteristics of bug fixes from well maintained, highly popular software projects are necessary. In this paper, we study the bug fixing histories extracted from the Eclipse project, a well maintained, highly popular open source project. After analyzing more than 36,000 bugs that belongs to three major kinds of exception types, we are able to reveal some common fix types that are frequently used to fix certain kinds of program exceptions. Our analysis shows that almost all of the exceptions that belong to a certain exception can be fixed by less than ten fix types. Our result implies that most of the bugs in software projects can be and should be fixed by only a few common fix patterns.