Improving Spectrum-Based Fault Localization using quality assessment and optimization of a test suite

Spectral fault localization is an automatic fault-localization technique to expedite debugging, which uses risk evaluation formula to rank the risk of fault existence in each program entity after collecting testing information. To assess the potential usefulness of a test suite and improves the accuracy for spectral fault localization, methods of assessing and optimizing test suite are proposed in this paper, which. Firstly, Average Ranking Cost of the test suite quality and two kinds of constrains are defined; and test suite quality assessment method based on these definitions is given. Secondly, a new test suite optimization method based on greedy algorithm is proposed. Finally, two widely used program databases (SIR and Defects4j) and 8 SFL techniques are applied to verify the effectiveness of our method; and the fault localization cost before and after optimizing test suites of test objects are analyzed using effect size. The largest effect size reaches 0.5398 and Each SFL technology has different degrees of improvement in the rankings of faulty statements in different programs by optimizing test suite.