During the last decade, we are witnessing the advent of a proliferation of techniques and associated tools for automatic program repair (APR). The current techniques and tools provide rich sources of knowledge that should be taken into consideration for future research. An overview of the current APR techniques and tools can serve the research community as a knowledge accumulator. However, APR techniques and tools differ in many aspects making knowledge accumulation challenging. To overcome this challenge, in this paper, we propose to leverage common components that constitute the APR techniques and tools. To achieve this objective, we surveyed current APR techniques and tools to identify the APR Suite of common constituent components, namely as APRSuite. Repair source and defect class are examples of identified components. We grouped these components into several categories such as patch evaluation and target defects. We have also identified some of the possible use cases per component as well as different lessons learned in studies for each component and for each use case. In addition, we developed a principled way for application of the components. The APRSuite and the principled way to apply it comprise a framework for knowledge accumulation, evaluation, and comparison of APR techniques and tools. The novelty of our work lies in its original viewpoint to the process of literature review in the APR research field. To demonstrate the applicability of the framework, we mapped out several concrete APR techniques, as a first instantiation of the framework. We observed that the framework brings discipline into the evaluation and/or comparison of APR techniques and tools. The framework offers these benefits objectively and systematically. We concluded that knowledge accumulation and characterization through literature reviews can be therefore facilitated through the identified suite of components while at the same time the existing component suite can be modified, augmented, or improved.

在过去的十年中，我们见证了用于自动程序修复（APR）的技术和相关工具的激增。当前的技术和工具提供了丰富的知识资源，应在以后的研究中加以考虑。当前的APR技术和工具的概述可以作为知识积累者为研究界服务。但是，APR技术和工具在许多方面都存在差异，这使得知识积累具有挑战性。为了克服这一挑战，在本文中，我们建议利用构成APR技术和工具的通用组件。为了实现这一目标，我们调查了当前的APR技术和工具，以识别APR Suite的通用组成部分，即APRSuite。维修来源和缺陷类别是已识别组件的示例。我们将这些组件分为几类，例如补丁评估和目标缺陷。我们还确定了每个组件的一些可能用例，以及每个组件和每个用例在研究中吸取的不同经验教训。此外，我们开发了一种原理性的组件应用方式。的APRSuite及其应用的原则方法构成一个框架用于APR技术和工具的知识积累，评估和比较。我们工作的新颖性在于它对APR研究领域的文献综述过程的独到见解。为了演示该框架的适用性，我们绘制了几种具体的APR技术，作为该框架的第一个实例。我们观察到，该框架将纪律纳入APR技术和工具的评估和/或比较。该框架客观而系统地提供了这些好处。我们得出的结论是，通过确定的组件套件可以促进通过文献综述的知识积累和表征，同时可以修改，扩充或改进现有的组件套件。