On the possibilities of (pseudo-) software cloning from external interactions

Abstract

This paper discusses some initial investigations into the application of genetic programming technology as a vehicle for re-examining some existing approaches within the software life-cycle. Specifically, it outlines a new direction in production techniques-software cloning from executable specifications or source code. It explores the possibility and advantages of producing a system from its external interactions. To allow this production to be automatic, the system assumes that it can view (and potentially manipulate) these external interactions of the original system; and hence it assumes the existence of either an executable specification or the source code-an object to assist in the generation of the external interactions; i.e. the system is treated as a black-box. Although the generation and application of software clones is relatively unexplored, it is believed that this is a fundamental technology that can have many different applications within a software engineering environment. For example, software clones could be used in: complexity measurement, software testing and software fault tolerance. Clearly, for these clones to be usable, their production needs to be automated. An interesting approach to this automatic production or generation problem is the application of evolutionary-based Genetic Programming (GP). Using the paradigms of best fit, selection, crossover and mutation, a number of clones, satisfying specific requirements, can be automatically generated. In general, GP is a flexible and powerful algorithm suitable for solving a variety of different problems. This paper presents the results of studies that have been conducted in order to answer questions related to feasibility of using GP for clone generation: what features of GP are important? What works and what does not? How can the GP be "tuned" for the problem? The results have been used to draw a set of suggestions and conclusions that indicate possible usability of GP-based approach to automatic generation of clones.

On the automation of fixing software bugs

“…On the other hand, recent work with GP [14] and our previous [2] (on top of whose framework we are building up our first ABF prototype) does not suffer from that problem, and they have given first promising results. Because ABF is easier than AP, we speculate that the ABF technique that we describe in this paper might have non-trivial applications in the coming years.…”

Search-based software engineering

“…Closely related topics have also been addressed. For example, Reformat et al [2003Reformat et al [ , 2007 explored applications of software clones and present a method for automatic clone generation using GP. Clones are also a focus for attention in the work of Di Penta et al [Di Penta 2005;, who proposed a language-independent software renovation framework to remove unused objects, clones and circular dependencies, and to cluster large libraries into more cohesive and smaller ones.…”

Evolutionary Improvement of Programs

“…Evolving faultless software from scratch with GP is a difficult task [47], but part of our interest in this problem is that we have as input the source code of the function that we want to optimise, and we can exploit this information when creating our initial population. Invariably, GP systems create an initial population using Koza's established ramped halfand-half method [28], but here we investigate three alternatives based on the concept of using the input program as a starting point.…”