Reference : Impact of Tool Support in Patch Construction

	Document type :	Scientific congresses, symposiums and conference proceedings : Unpublished conference
	Discipline(s) :	Engineering, computing & technology : Computer science
	Focus Areas :	Security, Reliability and Trust
	To cite this reference:	http://hdl.handle.net/10993/31858

Title :	Impact of Tool Support in Patch Construction
Language :	English
Author, co-author :	Koyuncu, Anil [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > >]
	Bissyande, Tegawendé François D Assise [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > >]
	Kim, Dongsun [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > >]
	Klein, Jacques [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC) >]
	Monperrus, Martin [University of Lille]
	Le Traon, Yves [University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication (FSTC) > Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC) >]
Publication date :	Jul-2017
Peer reviewed :	Yes
Audience :	International
Event name :	2017 International Symposium on Software Testing & Analysis (ISSTA)
Event date :	July 10–14, 2017
Keywords :	[en] Repair ; Debugging ; Patch ; Linux ; Empirical ; Tools ; Automation
Abstract :	[en] In this work, we investigate the practice of patch construction in the Linux kernel development, focusing on the differences between three patching processes: (1) patches crafted entirely manually to fix bugs, (2) those that are derived from warnings of bug detection tools, and (3) those that are automatically generated based on fix patterns. With this study, we provide to the research community concrete insights on the practice of patching as well as how the development community is currently embracing research and commercial patching tools to improve productivity in repair. The result of our study shows that tool-supported patches are increasingly adopted by the developer community while manually-written patches are accepted more quickly. Patch application tools enable developers to remain committed to contributing patches to the code base. Our findings also include that, in actual development processes, patches generally implement several change operations spread over the code, even for patches fixing warnings by bug detection tools. Finally, this study has shown that there is an opportunity to directly leverage the output of bug detection tools to readily generate patches that are appropriate for fixing the problem, and that are consistent with manually-written patches.
Permalink :	http://hdl.handle.net/10993/31858
DOI :	10.1145/3092703.3092713

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