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Detecting and Characterizing Semantic Inconsistencies in Ported CodeAdding similar features and bug fixes often requires porting program patches from reference implementations and adapting them to target implementations. Porting errors may result from faulty adaptations or inconsistent updates. This paper investigates (I) the types of porting errors found in practice, and (2) how to detect and characterize potential porting errors. Analyzing version histories, we define five categories of porting errors, including incorrect control- and data-flow, code redundancy, inconsistent identifier renamings, etc. Leveraging this categorization, we design a static control- and data-dependence analysis technique, SPA, to detect and characterize porting inconsistencies. Our evaluation on code from four open-source projects shows thai SPA can dell-oct porting inconsistencies with 65% to 73% precision and 90% recall, and identify inconsistency types with 58% to 63% precision and 92% to 100% recall. In a comparison with two existing error detection tools, SPA improves precision by 14 to 17 percentage points
Document ID
20140006056
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Ray, Baishakhi (Texas Univ. Austin, TX, United States)
Kim, Miryung (Texas Univ. Austin, TX, United States)
Person, Suzette J. (NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Rungta, Neha (NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
May 22, 2014
Publication Date
November 11, 2013
Subject Category
Computer Programming And Software
Report/Patent Number
NF1676L-16706
Meeting Information
Meeting: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: November 11, 2013
End Date: November 15, 2013
Sponsors: Association for Computing Machinery, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF CCF1149391
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF SHF0910818
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF CCF1117902
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF CNS1239498
WBS: WBS 534723.02.02.07.40
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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