Search based techniques for software fault prediction: current trends and future directions

The effective allocation of the resources is crucial and essential in the testing phase of the software development life cycle so that the weak areas in the software can be verified and validated efficiently. The prediction of fault prone classes in the early phases of software development can help software developers to focus the limited available resources on those portions of software, which are more prone to fault. Recently, the search based techniques have been successfully applied in the software engineering domain. In this study, we analyze the position of search based techniques for use in software fault prediction by collecting relevant studies from the literature which were conducted during the period January 1991 to October 2013. We further summarize current trends by assessing the performance capability of the search based techniques in the existing research and suggest future directions.