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Statistical fault localization (SFL) techniques use execution profiles and success/failure information from software executions, in conjunction with statistical inference, to automatically score program elements based on how likely they are…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-02-15 Yigit Kucuk , Tim A. D. Henderson , Andy Podgurski

Flaky tests have gained attention from the research community in recent years and with good reason. These tests lead to wasted time and resources, and they reduce the reliability of the test suites and build systems they affect. However,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Alan Romano , Zihe Song , Sampath Grandhi , Wei Yang , Weihang Wang

Background: Test flakiness is identified as a major issue that compromises the regression testing process of complex software systems. Flaky tests manifest non-deterministic behaviour, send confusing signals to developers, and break their…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-04-16 Sarra Habchi , Maxime Cordy , Mike Papadakis , Yves Le Traon

Flaky tests yield inconsistent results when they are repeatedly executed on the same code revision. They interfere with automated quality assurance of code changes and hinder efficient software testing. Previous work evaluated approaches to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Alexander Berndt , Vekil Bekmyradov , Rainer Gemulla , Marcus Kessel , Thomas Bach , Sebastian Baltes

Much research on software testing makes an implicit assumption that test failures are deterministic such that they always witness the presence of the same defects. However, this assumption is not always true because some test failures are…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-12-09 Maxime Cordy , Renaud Rwemalika , Mike Papadakis , Mark Harman

Flaky tests are a common problem in software testing. They produce inconsistent results when executed multiple times on the same code, invalidating the assumption that a test failure indicates a software defect. Recent work on LLM-based…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-15 Alexander Berndt , Thomas Bach , Rainer Gemulla , Marcus Kessel , Sebastian Baltes

Debugging is one of the most time-consuming and expensive tasks in software development. Several formula-based fault localization (FBFL) methods have been proposed, but they fail to guarantee a set of diagnoses across all failing tests or…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Pedro Orvalho , Mikoláš Janota , Vasco Manquinho

Flaky tests obstruct software development, and studying and proposing mitigations against them has therefore become an important focus of software engineering research. To conduct sound investigations on test flakiness, it is crucial to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Martin Gruber , Gordon Fraser

Software fault localization is one of the most expensive, tedious, and time-consuming activities in program debugging. This activity becomes even much more challenging in Software Product Line (SPL) systems due to the variability of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-09-22 Kien-Tuan Ngo , Thu-Trang Nguyen , Son Nguyen , Hieu Dinh Vo

The aim is to identify faulty predicates which have strong effect on program failure. Statistical debugging techniques are amongst best methods for pinpointing defects within the program source code. However, they have some drawbacks. They…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2016-12-20 Farid Feyzi , Esmaeel Nikravan , Saeed Parsa

Debugging is considered as a rigorous but important feature of software engineering process. Since more than a decade, the software engineering research community is exploring different techniques for removal of faults from programs but it…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-03-13 Safeeullah Soomro , Mohammad Riyaz Belgaum , Zainab Alansari , Mahdi H. Miraz

Fault localization is to identify faulty source code. It could be done on various granularities, e.g., classes, methods, and statements. Most of the automated fault localization (AFL) approaches are coarse-grained because it is challenging…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-07-21 Leping Li , Hui Liu

Developers always wish to ensure that their latest changes to the code base do not break existing functionality. If test cases fail, they expect these failures to be connected to the submitted changes. Unfortunately, a flaky test can be the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-09-10 Azeem Ahmad , Ola Leifler , Kristian Sandahl

In this paper, we propose DeepRL4FL, a deep learning fault localization (FL) approach that locates the buggy code at the statement and method levels by treating FL as an image pattern recognition problem. DeepRL4FL does so via novel code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Yi Li , Shaohua Wang , Tien N. Nguyen

Flaky tests (tests with non-deterministic outcomes) can be problematic for testing efficiency and software reliability. Flaky tests in test suites can also significantly delay software releases. There have been several studies that attempt…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-07-05 Negar Hashemi , Amjed Tahir , Shawn Rasheed

Software testing is essential for the reliable development of complex software systems. A key step in software testing is fault localization, which uses test data to pinpoint failure-inducing combinations for further diagnosis. Existing…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Yi Ji , Simon Mak , Ryan Lekivetz , Joseph Morgan

We report our experience of using failure symptoms, such as error messages or stack traces, to identify flaky test failures in a Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline for a large industrial software system, SAP HANA. Although failure…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Gabin An , Juyeon Yoon , Thomas Bach , Jingun Hong , Shin Yoo

Statistical fault localization is an easily deployed technique for quickly determining candidates for faulty code locations. If a human programmer has to search the fault beyond the top candidate locations, though, more traditional…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-01-11 Ezekiel Soremekun , Lukas Kirschner , Marcel Böhme , Andreas Zeller

Software testing assures that code changes do not adversely affect existing functionality. However, a test case can be flaky, i.e., passing and failing across executions, even for the same version of the source code. Flaky test cases…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-09-02 Sakina Fatima , Taher A. Ghaleb , Lionel Briand

Flaky tests are tests that nondeterministically pass and fail in unchanged code. These tests can be detrimental to developers' productivity. Particularly when tests run in continuous integration environments, the tests may be competing for…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Denini Silva , Martin Gruber , Satyajit Gokhale , Ellen Arteca , Alexi Turcotte , Marcelo d'Amorim , Wing Lam , Stefan Winter , Jonathan Bell