Since software today is larger and more complex than ever before, it is not surprising that the debugging process is becoming more difficult and costly. Yet, at the same time, this presents golden opportunities for researchers to have a significant impact on solving real-world problems. While manual debugging is impractical for large software, techniques that claim to effectively locate a fault have not matured to the desired level of accuracy, consistency, and usability. Developers face many obstacles during the debugging process, for example ambiguities of distinguishing executions in the presence of multiple causative faults, difficulties in reliably recording and replaying failed executions, and uncertainty that bug fixes might introduce even more faults into the software. Furthermore, many existing approaches suffer from critical shortcomings that limit their applicability, for example the complexity and lack of scalability of formal verification, the imprecision of static analysis, the high performance cost of dynamic techniques, non-productive human-centric debugging environments, or high setup and operating costs. Researchers often rely on simplified assumptions or model their solutions after methods to handle selected subject programs that do not accurately reflect the complexity in large-scale industrial software and related development processes. Practitioners thus raise the question of which value research proposals can add to their actual work.

The goal of IWPD is to highlight the most pressing challenges, as well as innovative solutions associated with program debugging, especially with respect to software business, methodologies, techniques, environments, and human factors. Experience reports from industry or empirical studies on these aspects are welcome. IWPD will bring together researchers and practitioners in order 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:

  Strategies for effective and efficient program debugging
  Challenges and emerging techniques in program debugging for
        large scale real-life applications and domain-specific applications
  Debugging for multi-(core, process, or threaded) programs
  Empirical studies and open source-based benchmarking infrastructure
  Experience reports and industrial best practices
  Impacts of software business, human factors, programming languages,
        and tool environments on program debugging
  Integrating debugging with other software development and
        maintenance activities
  Social aspects of program debugging
  Software risk analysis and cost estimation for fault localization,
        bug fixing, and their social interactions
  Transitioning from research to practice
  Pedagogical models for effectively teaching program debugging