This week, I began processing the patches. I received a large zip file from Dr. Ghanbari containing patches for bugs in Defects4J. Defects4J currently contains approximately 700 bugs in its library, and Dr. Ghanbari obtained a large collection of patches for these bugs. The problem is that these patches are not properly categorized. My task is to go through every documented bug in the zip file and all of its patches, filtering out the patches that fail the test suite.

Progress Update for this Week:

• 6/10/2024
  • Attempted to work on one bug. First, I checked out the buggy program from Defects4J. Then, I used Git to apply patches to it. I used Defects4J to test the correctness of every patch. While doing so, I got an error message saying that the patch failed to apply. I spent a long time trying to resolve the issue but could not fix the problem. I brought this issue up to Dr. Ghanbari.
• 6/11/2024
  • During the group meeting with Dr. Ghanbari and fellow students, we brainstormed solutions to the problem that I faced yesterday. Dr. Ghanbari suggested that I should invert the patch. Attempting this solution, I found out that it did not resolve the issue. Even after inverting and reapplying the patch, I still got the same error. Additionally, when I ran the “defects4j test” command, I encountered another error message stating that the directory I was in was not a valid working directory. I felt confused.
• 6/12/2024
  • Researching on the problem, I figured out the cause. Reviewing the Defects4J document, I realized that the “defects4j test” command assumed a specific structure, particularly in the working directory. The working directory had to contain both the test data and the patched program. With this in mind, I navigated to the correct directory and executed the program. This helped resolved my issue and provided me with a sense of relief. However, this problem costed me two days.
• 6/13/2024
  • Began systematically processing the patches. For each bug in the zip file, I checked out the buggy program and applied the corresponding patches. I then tested these patched programs against their respective test suites to assess each patch’s correctness and effectiveness. Each folder contained varying numbers of patches, ranging from 1 to 10 per folder. This process was repeated for every directory, ensuring a thorough analysis of each patch.
• 6/14/2024
  • Continued the workload from yesterday. This task is daunting, as I have to go through 700+ bugs and apply all the patches. On top of this, some patches require significant CPU time to process. I realized that manually applying every patch would be inefficient, so I wrote a script to automate the traversal through the bugs and patch files. Even with this automation, I estimate that this task will take several days to complete.
• 6/15/2024
  • Continued the task from yesterday. To improve efficiency, I implemented concurrent processing by running tests in parallel across multiple terminals.
• 6/16/2024
  • Continued the task from yesterday, maintaining the use of concurrent processing by running tests in parallel across multiple terminals to enhance efficiency.