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Eng."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,19]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Debugging performance bugs in configurable software systems is a complex and time-consuming task that requires not only fixing a bug, but also understanding its root cause. While there is a vast body of literature on debugging strategies, there is no consensus on general debugging. This makes it difficult to provide concrete guidance for developers, especially for configuration-dependent performance bugs.   The goal of our work is to alleviate this situation by providing an framework to describe debugging strategies in a more general, unifying way.   We conducted a user study with 12 professional developers who debugged a performance bug in a real-world configurable system. To observe developers in an unobstructive way, we provided an immersive virtual reality tool, SoftVR, giving them a large degree of freedom to choose the preferred debugging strategy.   The results show that the existing documentation of strategies is too coarse-grained and intermixed to identify successful approaches. In a subsequent qualitative analysis, we devised a coding framework to reason about debugging approaches. With this framework, we identified five goal-oriented episodes that developers employ, which they also confirmed in subsequent interviews.   Our work provides a unified description of debugging strategies, allowing researchers a common foundation to study debugging and practitioners and teachers guidance on successful debugging strategies.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3717523","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,19]],"date-time":"2025-06-19T11:16:02Z","timestamp":1750331762000},"page":"1409-1431","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Understanding Debugging as Episodes: A Case Study on Performance Bugs in Configurable Software Systems"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"2","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3454-4121","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Max","family":"Weber","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6204-2095","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alina","family":"Mailach","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ScaDS.AI Dresden-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany"},{"name":"Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3687-2233","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sven","family":"Apel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Saarland Informatics Campus, Saarbr\u00fccken, Germany"},{"name":"Saarland University, Saarbr\u00fccken, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5815-266X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Janet","family":"Siegmund","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2176-876X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Raimund","family":"Dachselt","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ScaDS.AI Dresden-Leipzig, Dresden, Germany"},{"name":"Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7741-7777","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Norbert","family":"Siegmund","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ScaDS.AI Dresden-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany"},{"name":"Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/VL"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/1753326.1753336"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/248448.248458"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","unstructured":"Payel Bandyopadhyay. 2020. 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