A Comprehensive Study of Bug Fixes in Quantum Programs

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of 96 real-world bugs in quantum programs across four languages, highlighting the predominance of quantum-specific bugs and proposing bug pattern classifications to aid debugging research.

Contribution

It is the first extensive study on bug fixing in quantum programs, identifying key bug patterns and emphasizing the need for specialized debugging techniques.

Findings

Over 80% of bugs are quantum-specific.

Summarized and extended bug patterns in quantum programs.

Math-related bugs are the most critical category.

Abstract

As quantum programming evolves, more and more quantum programming languages are being developed. As a result, debugging and testing quantum programs have become increasingly important. While bug fixing in classical programs has come a long way, there is a lack of research in quantum programs. To this end, this paper presents a comprehensive study on bug fixing in quantum programs. We collect and investigate 96 real-world bugs and their fixes from four popular quantum programming languages Qiskit, Cirq, Q#, and ProjectQ). Our study shows that a high proportion of bugs in quantum programs are quantum-specific bugs (over 80%), which requires further research in the bug fixing domain. We also summarize and extend the bug patterns in quantum programs and subdivide the most critical part, math-related bugs, to make it more applicable to the study of quantum programs. Our findings summarize the characteristics of bugs in quantum programs and provide a basis for studying testing and debugging quantum programs.