Installation

Installation Instructions

In the following, we describe how to replicate the validation from our paper (Section 5) step-by-step. The instructions explain how to build the Docker image and run the validation in a Docker container.

1. Install Docker (if required)

How to install Docker depends on your operating system:

Then, start the docker deamon.

2. Open a Suitable Terminal

# Windows Command Prompt: 
 - Press 'Windows Key + R' on your keyboard
 - Type in 'cmd' 
 - Click 'OK' or press 'Enter' on your keyboard
 
# Windows PowerShell:
 - Open the search bar (Default: 'Windows Key') and search for 'PowerShell'
 - Start the PowerShell
 
# Linux:
 - Press 'ctrl + alt + T' on your keyboard

Clone this repository to a directory of your choice using git:

git clone https://github.com/VariantSync/DiffDetective.git

Then, navigate to the esecfse22 folder in your local clone of this repository:

cd DiffDetective/replication/esecfse22

3. Build the Docker Container

To build the Docker container you can run the build script corresponding to your operating system:

# Windows: 
  .\build.bat
# Linux/Mac (bash): 
  ./build.sh

4. Verification & Replication

Running the Replication or Verification

To execute the replication you can run the execute script corresponding to your operating system with replication as first argument. To execute the script you first have to navigate to the esecfse22 directory, if you have not done so.

cd DiffDetective/replication/esecfse22

Windows:

.\execute.bat replication

Linux/Mac (bash):

./execute.sh replication

WARNING! The replication will at least require an hour and might require up to a day depending on your system. Therefore, we offer a short verification (5-10 minutes) which runs DiffDetective on only four of the datasets. You can run it by providing “verification” as argument instead of “replication” (i.e., .\execute.bat verification, ./execute.sh verification). If you want to stop the execution, you can call the provided script for stopping the container in a separate terminal. When restarted, the execution will continue processing by restarting at the last unfinished repository.

Windows:

.\stop-execution.bat

Linux/Mac (bash):

./stop-execution.sh

You might see warnings or errors reported from SLF4J like Failed to load class "org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder" which you can safely ignore. Further troubleshooting advice can be found at the bottom of this file.

The results of the verification will be stored in the results directory.

Expected Output of the Verification

The aggregated results of the verification/replication can be found in the following files. The example file content shown below should match your results when running the verification. (Note that the links below only have a target after running the replication or verification.)

Moreover, the results comprise the (LaTeX) tables that are part of our paper and appendix. The processing times might deviate because performance depends on your hardware.

(Optional) Running DiffDetective on Custom Datasets

You can also run DiffDetective on other datasets by providing the path to the dataset file as first argument to the execution script:

Windows:

.\execute.bat path\to\custom\dataset.md

Linux/Mac (bash):

./execute.sh path/to/custom/dataset.md

The input file must have the same format as the other dataset files (i.e., repositories are listed in a Markdown table). You can find dataset files in the docs/datasets folder.

Troubleshooting

‘Got permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket’

Problem: This is a common problem under Linux, if the user trying to execute Docker commands does not have the permissions to do so.

Fix: You can fix this problem by either following the post-installation instructions, or by executing the scripts in the replication package with elevated permissions (i.e., sudo).

‘Unable to find image ‘replication-package:latest’ locally’

Problem: The Docker container could not be found. This either means that the name of the container that was built does not fit the name of the container that is being executed (this only happens if you changed the provided scripts), or that the Docker container was not built yet.

Fix: Follow the instructions described above in the section Build the Docker Container.

No results after verification, or ‘cannot create directory ‘../results/validation/current’: Permission denied’

Problem: This problem can occur due to how permissions are managed inside the Docker container. More specifically, it will appear, if Docker is executed with elevated permissions (i.e., sudo) and if there is no results directory because it was deleted manually. In this case, Docker will create the directory with elevated permissions, and the Docker user has no permissions to access the directory.

Fix: If there is a results directory, delete it with elevated permission (e.g., sudo rm -r results). Then, create a new results directory without elevated permissions, or execute git restore . to restore the deleted directory.

Failed to load class “org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder”

Problem: An operation within the initialization phase of the logger library we use (tinylog) failed.

Fix: Please ignore this warning. Tinylog will fall back onto a default implementation (Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation) and logging will work as expected.