Modeling Programs with Unstructured Control Flow for Debugging

Even with modern software development methodologies, the actual debugging of source code, i.e., location and identification of errors in the program when errant behavior is encountered during testing, remains a crucial part of software development. To apply model-based diagnosis techniques, which have long been state of the art in hardware diagnosis, for automatic debugging, a model of a given program must be automatically created from the source code. This work describes a model that reflects the execution semantics of the Java language, including exceptions and unstructured control flow, thereby providing unprecedented scope in the application of model-based diagnosis to programs. Besides the structural model building process, a behavioral description of some of the model components is given. Finally, impacts of the modeling decisions on the diagnostic process are considered.

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