CrashAwareDev: apoiando o desenvolvimento a partir da mineração e análise de crash reports

Abstract

Exception handling mechanisms are a common feature of mainstream programming languages. Uncaught exceptions are the main cause of crashes in software systems. A crash is an abnormal behavior of a system that leads to the interruption of its execution. This is one of the reasons that have led to the use of crash reporting tools, which can store fault information that has occurred in the system for easier location, prioritization, and debugging. However, we can think of another utility for such tools. This information could be used to support the developer during system coding. In this work a study was performed on a crash report of a real Web system, where the causes of crashes in a given period were documented and some error patterns were identified. In addition, reporting information was observed that could support programmers in their day-to-day activities. A tool integrated with the Eclipse development environment, named CrashAwareDev, was implemented in order to bring the development environment closer to the crash report. A case study was conducted and showed that the tool can support software development by (i) displaying bug pattern alerts directly in the source code, (ii) tracing the classes involved in recent faults, and (iii) speeding up the crashes’s location within the development environment itself.