ExpressAPR: Efficient Patch Validation for Java Automated Program Repair Systems

Automated program repair (APR) approaches suffer from long patch validation time, which limits their practical application and receives relatively low attention. The patch validation process repeatedly executes tests to filter patches, and has been recognized as the dual of mutation analysis. We systematically investigate existing mutation testing techniques and recognize five families of acceleration techniques that are suitable for patch validation, two of which are never adapted to a general-purpose patch validator. We implement and demonstrate ExpressAPR, the first framework that combines five families of acceleration techniques for patch validation as the complete set. In our evaluation on 30 random Defects4J bugs and four APR systems, ExpressAPR accelerates patch validation for two order-of-magnitudes over plain validation or one order-of-magnitude over the state-of-the-art approach, benefiting APR researchers and users with a much shorter patch validation time. Demo video available at https://youtu.be/7AB-4VvBuuM Tool repo (source code + Docker image + evaluation dataset) available at https://github.com/ExpressAPR/ExpressAPR