Submission deadline extended to September 15, 2013.

As software today is larger and more complex than ever before, it is not surprising that the debugging process is also much more difficult and costly. While manual debugging is quickly becoming impractical, techniques that claim to automatically locate a fault have not matured to the desired level of accuracy and consistency. Among the obstacles that developers must face during the debugging process are the ambiguity of distinguishing executions in the presence of multiple causative faults, the difficulty in reliably recording and replaying failed executions, and the uncertainty that bug fixes will not introduce even more faults into the software. Furthermore, many existing approaches suffer from critical shortcomings that limit their applicability, such as the complexity and lack of scalability of formal verification, the imprecision of static analysis, and the high performance cost of dynamic techniques. Studies are underway to resolve these problems, but researchers often rely on unrealistic assumptions or use subject programs that do not accurately reflect large-scale industrial software. Practitioners question whether such research proposals can add much value to their work.

The goal of this workshop is to highlight the most pressing challenges and innovative solutions associated with program debugging, especially with respect to methodologies, techniques, and environments. Experience reports from the industry or empir-ical studies on these three aspects are also welcome. IWPD will bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss the latest advancements and determine further challenges that must be overcome in the area of program debugging.

The workshop welcomes submissions that cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  Automation of program debugging
  Challenges and emerging techniques in program debugging
        for large scale real-life applications
  Static and dynamic analyses for software fault localization and bug-fixing
  Apply debugging to multi-core and multi-threaded programs
  Impacts of program languages and environments on debugging and Testing
  Impact of program debugging and test case prioritization on regression testing
  Software risk analysis and fault proneness prediction
  Software testing, verification, and validation for debugging
  Online monitoring and record/replay for program debugging
  Reducing the cost of program debugging
  Empirical studies and benchmarking
  Experience reports and industrial best practices
  Tool support
  Transitioning from research to practice
  Integrating debugging with other software development activities
  Approaches to teaching program debugging