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Open source software (OSS) approach has become increasingly prevalent for software development. As the widespread utilization of OSS, the reliability of OSS products becomes an important issue. By simulating the testing and debugging processes of software life cycle, the rate-based queueing simulation model has shown its feasibility for closed source software (CSS) reliability assessment. However, the debugging activities of OSS projects are different in many ways from those of CSS projects and thus the simulation approach needs to be calibrated for OSS projects. In this paper, we first characterize the debugging activities of OSS projects. Based on this, we propose a new rate-based queueing simulation framework for OSS reliability assessment including the model and the procedures. Then a decision model is developed to determine the optimal version-updating time with respect to two objectives: minimizing the time for version update, and maximizing OSS reliability. To illustrate the proposed framework, three real datasets from Apache and GNOME projects are used. The empirical results indicate that our framework is able to effectively approximate the real scenarios. Moreover, the influences of the core contributor staffing levels are analyzed and the optimal version-updating times are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dynamic software updating (DSU) systems patch programs on the fly without incurring downtime. To avoid failures due to the updating process itself, many DSU systems employ timing restrictions. However, timing restrictions are theoretically imperfect, and their practical effectiveness is an open question. This paper presents the first significant empirical evaluation of three popular timing restrictions: activeness safety (AS), which prevents updates to active functions, con-freeness safety (CFS), which only allows modifications to active functions when doing so is provably type-safe, and manual identification of the event-handling loops during which an update may occur. We evaluated these timing restrictions using a series of DSU patches to three programs: OpenSSH, vsftpd, and ngIRCd. We systematically applied updates at each distinct update point reached during execution of a suite of system tests for these programs to determine which updates pass and which fail. We found that all three timing restrictions prevented most failures, but only manual identification allowed none. Further, although CFS and AS allowed many more update points, manual identification still supported updates with minimal delay. Finally, we found that manual identification required the least developer effort. Overall, we conclude that manual identification is most effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hardware failure analysis technique adapted to software yielded three rules for generating test cases sensitive to code errors. These rules, and a procedure for generating these cases, are given with examples. Areas for further study are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a testing strategy designed to detect errors in the control flow of a computer program, and the conditions under which this strategy is reliable are given and characterized. The control flow statements in a computer program partition the input space into a set of mutually exclusive domains, each of which corresponds to a particular program path and consists of input data points which cause that path to be executed. The testing strategy generates test points to examine the boundaries of a domain to detect whether a domain error has occurred, as either one or more of these boundaries will have shifted or else the corresponding predicate relational operator has changed. If test points can be chosen within ∈ of each boundary, under the appropriate assumptions, the strategy is shown to be reliable in detecting domain errors of magnitude greater than ∈. Moreover, the number of test points required to test each domain grows only linearly with both the dimensionality of the input space and the number of predicates along the path being tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of test data selection proposed by Goodenough and Gerhart is examined. In order to extend and refine this theory, the concepts of a revealing test criterion and a revealing subdomain are proposed. These notions are then used to provide a basis for constructing program tests. A subset of a program's input domain is revealing if the existence of one incorrectly processed input implies that all of the subset's elements axe processed incorrectly. The intent of this notion is to partition the program's domain in such a way that all elements of an equivalence class are either processed correctly or incorrectly. A test set is then formed by choosing one element from each class. This process represents perfect program testing. For a practical testing strategy, the domain is partitioned into subdomains which are revealing for errors considered likely to occur. Three programs which have previously appeared in the literature are discussed and tested using the notions developed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]