APRSuite: A suite of components and use cases based on categorical decomposition of automatic program repair techniques and tools

Abstract

During the last decade, we are witnessing the advent of a proliferation of techniques and associated tools for automatic program repair (APR). The current techniques and tools provide rich sources of knowledge that should be taken into consideration for future research. An overview of the current APR techniques and tools can serve the research community as a knowledge accumulator. However, APR techniques and tools differ in many aspects making knowledge accumulation challenging. To overcome this challenge, in this paper, we propose to leverage common components that constitute the APR techniques and tools. To achieve this objective, we surveyed current APR techniques and tools to identify the APR Suite of common constituent components, namely as APRSuite. Repair source and defect class are examples of identified components. We grouped these components into several categories such as patch evaluation and target defects. We have also identified some of the possible use cases per component as well as different lessons learned in studies for each component and for each use case. In addition, we developed a principled way for application of the components. The APRSuite and the principled way to apply it comprise a framework for knowledge accumulation, evaluation, and comparison of APR techniques and tools. The novelty of our work lies in its original viewpoint to the process of literature review in the APR research field. To demonstrate the applicability of the framework, we mapped out several concrete APR techniques, as a first instantiation of the framework. We observed that the framework brings discipline into the evaluation and/or comparison of APR techniques and tools. The framework offers these benefits objectively and systematically. We concluded that knowledge accumulation and characterization through literature reviews can be therefore facilitated through the identified suite of components while at the same time the existing component suite can be modified, augmented, or improved.