Chianti: A change impact analysis tool for programs

Abstract

Chianti is a change impact analysis tool for Java that is implemented in the context of the Eclipse environment. Chianti analyzes two versions of a Java program, decomposes their difference into a set of atomic changes, and a partial order inter-dependences of these changes is calculated. Change impact is then reported in terms of affected (regression or unit) tests whose execution behavior may have been modified by the applied changes. For each affected test, Chianti also determines a set of affecting changes that were responsible for the test's modified behavior. This latter step of isolating failure inducing changes for one specific test from irrelevant changes can be used as a debugging technique in situations where a test fails unexpectedly after a long editing session.