一句话：提出基于 LLM 的差分测试方法 Versify，在工业规模上帮助 Linux 发行版维护者定位版本升级与迁移中的软件包不兼容。
开源 Linux 发行版经常经历版本升级与迁移，大规模软件变更极易引发不兼容问题。差分测试虽在软件测试中被广泛使用，但在工业环境下检测此类不兼容仍面临挑战。本文报告了利用 LLM 应对 Linux 发行版社区所遇难题的实践经验，提出了一种基于 LLM 的差分测试方法 Versify，用于辅助发行版维护者在版本升级和迁移过程中定位不兼容行为。该方法在 Linux 发行版社区进行了试运行，共发现 8,489 处行为差异，其中 644 处被开发者列为优先关注对象；经去重与过滤后，最终确认 39 份唯一的不兼容性报告。发行版开发者的反馈表明，这些报告为未来操作系统版本中的软件包选择提供了有价值的建议。
An open source Linux distribution often undergoes version upgrades and migrations, which is prone to incompatibility issues especially when it comes to large-scale software changes. Although differential testing has been widely used in software testing, it is still challenging to apply it for detecting such incompatibilities in the context of industrial settings. In this paper, we report our experience in leveraging LLMs to address the challenges faced by the Linux distribution community. Specifically, we develop an LLM-based differential testing method called Versify to assist maintainers of Linux distributions in locating incompatibilities during version upgrades and migrations. Its trial operation period within the Linux distribution community shows that it uncovered 8,489 instances of differing behavior, of which 644 were prioritized for attention by developers. After deduplication and filtering, 39 unique compatibility reports were identified. Feedback from Linux distributions developers indicates that our reports have provided valuable recommendations for package selection in future OS releases.
DOI 原文 ·
@inproceedings{paperbot9567,
title = {LLM-assisted Industrial-Scale Differential Testing of Package Incompatibilities in Linux Distributions},
author = {Yuhao Yang and Chijin Zhou and Runzhe Wang and Weibo Zhang and Yuheng Shen and Xiaohai Shi and Tao Ma and Chang Gao and Zhe Wang and Ying Fu and Heyuan Shi},
booktitle = {ASE},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1109/ase63991.2025.00293}
}