The paper examines how large‑language‑model (LLM) decompilers, which produce clean, idiomatic C code, are currently evaluated mainly on recompilability and passing shipped tests. It shows that these metrics can mask significant behavioral differences: a decompiled function may recompile and pass all tests yet diverge on other inputs or lose disclosed vulnerabilities. To address this, the authors propose Decompile‑Diverge, a behavioral oracle that synthesizes drivers, fuzzes inputs, and compares the decompiled code’s behavior to the original, revealing divergences in up to 13% of cases and exposing gaps in current evaluation suites.
By Chang Liu, Edward Raff, Kristopher Micinski
arXiv:2606. 28409v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Software-compilable C programs routinely fail to complete the four-stage pipeline of a high-level synthesis (HLS) toolchain -- compilation, C simulation (CSim), synthesis, and C/RTL co-simulation (CoSim) -- because HLS accepts only a synthesizable subset of C (HLS-C).
By Zhe Zhao, Hongbing Lang, Zhihan Xiao, Luke Ztz Hu, John Imoleayo Adebisi, Songping Mai
The paper investigates hallucination in large language model–based automated program repair (APR). It defines hallucination as producing patches or intermediate artifacts that are not grounded in available repair evidence, and analyzes it across final patches and intermediate tasks such as triggering test case identification, line coverage prediction, and additional test case generation. Experiments on 832 Defects4J bugs show that only 21.0%–55.9% of patches pass the developer test suite, with 72.7% of sampled repairs exhibiting hallucinations, often due to incorrect causal localization or repair strategies.
By Xuemeng Cai, Jiakun Liu, Linhan Yang, Wei Ma, Lingxiao Jiang
The paper introduces a domain‑specific debugging agent for repairing near‑miss accelerator kernels, arguing that debugging is more efficient than regenerating kernels from scratch. It tackles knowledge scarcity, integrity, and cost control through pattern retrieval, anti‑cheat detection, and convergence safeguards. Empirical results show the debug agent achieves a 66.7% Pass@1 rate and uses 92.8% fewer tokens per success compared to traditional regeneration methods.
By Yansong Sun, Shenxiu Wu, Siyuan Chen, Runlin Hou, Junhao Qiu, Junming Cao, Shudi Shao, Zhichao Lu, Qingfu Zhang
Code language models are now trusted collaborators in production workflows for debugging, refactoring, and iterative repair, and every benchmark that evaluates them assumes the instructions they act on are correct. We study what happens when that assumption breaks.
arXiv:2607. 04537v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Code language models are now trusted collaborators in production workflows for debugging, refactoring, and iterative repair, and every benchmark that evaluates them assumes the instructions they act on are correct.
By Raj Jaiswal, Anany Singh Divy, Savar Bhasin, Adi Bajpai, Tanuja Ganu, Rajiv Ratn Shah
arXiv:2608. 02712v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Kernel generation for hardware accelerators such as GPUs and NPUs has become a proving ground for large language models (LLMs), and state-of-the-art systems raise correctness through pipelines that couple LLMs with agentic reinforcement learning and evolutionary search.
By Yansong Sun, Shenxiu Wu, Siyuan Chen, Runlin Hou, Junhao Qiu, Junming Cao, Shudi Shao, Zhichao Lu, Qingfu Zhang
arXiv:2607. 19843v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have made automated program repair (APR) increasingly practical for real-world bugs, but repairing directly from bug reports remains underconstrained.
By Yuhao Tan, Zhibang Yang, Fangkai Yang, Yuan Yao, Yu Kang, Lu Wang, Pu Zhao, Xin Zhang, Xiaoxing Ma, Qingwei Lin, Saravan Rajmohan, Dongmei Zhang
arXiv:2609.13728v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Historical Linux kernel patches capture defect knowledge that applies beyond their original repair sites. Recent work has shown that large language m...
By Ruoyu Wang, Tuo Li, Jia Li
The paper introduces PLLM+, a hybrid pipeline for resolving Python dependency conflicts that combines deterministic steps—such as static AST inference, replaying known successful configurations from a solutions database, and live PyPI validation—with an LLM-based repair fallback. Evaluated on the HG2.9K benchmark of 2,891 failing snippets, PLLM+ successfully fixes 1,500 cases, outperforming the baseline PLLM and reducing average runtime from 368.7 to 71.8 seconds per snippet. The majority of fixes (1,495) come from replaying existing configurations, while the LLM fallback contributes only five additional solutions.
By Veronica Poweska, Ariana Oyanguren, Jessica Pourleyli, Sourena Khanzadeh, Manar Alalfi
The paper introduces THEMIS, a stage-aware repair workflow that externalizes the requirement-to-repair process by generating semantic interpretations, a runtime requirement-code graph, graph-derived developer guidance, retained repair rationale and patches, and post-edit audit records. A retrospective audit of 300 SWE-bench Lite cases shows that these artifacts enable cross-stage inspection, with a complete developer rationale available for 288 cases and 214 cases retaining a full audited field set. The retained records also allow systematic measurement of cross-stage correspondence, revealing high recurrence of target symbols across rationales and patches, and a preliminary improvement in resolving cases compared to a direct same-input condition.
By Zewen Tao, Shin-nosuke Ishikawa
The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can automatically verify no-code bug fixes—solutions that instruct users to change settings, upgrade versions, or alter workflows—by executing them in a real browser environment. Using 322 fixes from a benchmark, the study tests three executor agents (OpenCUA‑72B, Claude Sonnet 5, and Meta’s Muse Glimmer) and finds that only 17.6% of issues could be set up and passed sanity checks, with resolution rates ranging from 14.6% to 49.7% depending on the executor. Even the best configuration resolved fewer than half of the fixes, and executor choice significantly affected outcomes, highlighting the need for execution-based verification before such fixes reach users.
By Utku Boran Torun, Veli Karakaya, Eray T\"uz\"un