Finding Regressions in Projects under Version Control Systems

BENDÍK, Jaroslav, Nikola BENEŠ and Ivana ČERNÁ. Finding Regressions in Projects under Version Control Systems. In Leszek A. Maciaszek and Marten van Sinderen. 13th International Conference on Software Technologies. Proceedings of the 13th Inte. Porto: SciTePress. p. 186-197. ISBN 978-989-758-320-9. doi:10.5220/0006864401860197. 2018.

Basic information

• Original name: Finding Regressions in Projects under Version Control Systems
• Authors: BENDÍK, Jaroslav (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution), Nikola BENEŠ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution) and Ivana ČERNÁ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Proceedings of the 13th Inte. Porto, 13th International Conference on Software Technologies, p. 186-197, 12 pp. 2018.
• Publisher: SciTePress

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Proceedings paper
• Field of Study: 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
• Country of publisher: Portugal
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: printed version "print"
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14330/18:00103101
• Organization unit: Faculty of Informatics
• ISBN: 978-989-758-320-9
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5220/0006864401860197
• Keywords in English: Version Control Systems;Regressions;Regression Points;Code Debugging;Bisection
• Tags: firank_B
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Version Control Systems (VCS) are frequently used to support development of large-scale software projects. A typical VCS repository can contain various intertwined branches consisting of a large number of commits. If some kind of unwanted behaviour (e.g. a bug in the code) is found in the project, it is desirable to find the commit that introduced it. Such commit is called a regression point. There are two main issues regarding the regression points. First, detecting whether the project after a certain commit is correct can be very expensive and it is thus desirable to minimise the number of such queries. Second, there can be several regression points preceding the actual commit and in order to fix the actual commit it is usually desirable to find the latest regression point. Contemporary VCS contain methods for regression identification, see e.g. the git bisect tool. In this paper, we present a new regression identification algorithm that outperforms the current tools by decreasing the number of validity queries. At the same time, our algorithm tends to find the latest regression points which is a feature that is missing in the state-of-the-art algorithms. The paper provides an experimental evaluation on a real data set.

Links

• MUNI/A/0854/2017, interní kód MU: Name: Rozsáhlé výpočetní systémy: modely, aplikace a verifikace VII.

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A

• 692474, interní kód MU: Name: AMASS - Architecture-driven, Multi-concern and Seamless Assurance and Certification of Cyber-Physical Systems (Acronym: AMASS)

Investor: European Union, ECSEL