GALA: Multimodal Graph Alignment for Bug Localization in Automated Program Repair

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Liu, Zhuoyao, Zeng, Zhengran, Huang, Shu-Dong, Liu, Yang, Zhang, Shikun, Ye, Wei
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Liu, Zhuoyao
Zeng, Zhengran
Huang, Shu-Dong
Liu, Yang
Zhang, Shikun
Ye, Wei
author_facet Liu, Zhuoyao
Zeng, Zhengran
Huang, Shu-Dong
Liu, Yang
Zhang, Shikun
Ye, Wei
contents Large Language Model (LLM)-based Automated Program Repair (APR) has shown strong potential on textual benchmarks, yet struggles in multimodal scenarios where bugs are reported with GUI screenshots. Existing methods typically convert images into plain text, which discards critical spatial relationships and causes a severe disconnect between visual observations and code components, leading localization to degrade into imprecise keyword matching. To bridge this gap, we propose GALA (Graph Alignment for Localization in APR), a framework that shifts multimodal APR from implicit semantic guessing to explicit structural reasoning. GALA operates in four stages: it first constructs an Image UI Graph to capture visual elements and their structural relationships; then performs file-level alignment by cross-referencing this UI graph with repository-level structures (e.g., file references) to locate candidate files; next conducts function-level alignment by reasoning over fine-grained code dependencies (e.g., call graphs) to precisely ground visual elements to corresponding code components; and finally performs patch generation within the grounded code context based on the aligned files and functions. By systematically enforcing both semantic and relational consistency across modalities, GALA establishes a highly accurate visual-to-code mapping. Evaluations on the SWE-bench Multimodal benchmark demonstrate that GALA achieves state-of-the-art performance, highlighting the effectiveness of hierarchical structural alignment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_08089
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GALA: Multimodal Graph Alignment for Bug Localization in Automated Program Repair
Liu, Zhuoyao
Zeng, Zhengran
Huang, Shu-Dong
Liu, Yang
Zhang, Shikun
Ye, Wei
Software Engineering
D.2.5; I.2.7; I.4.8
Large Language Model (LLM)-based Automated Program Repair (APR) has shown strong potential on textual benchmarks, yet struggles in multimodal scenarios where bugs are reported with GUI screenshots. Existing methods typically convert images into plain text, which discards critical spatial relationships and causes a severe disconnect between visual observations and code components, leading localization to degrade into imprecise keyword matching. To bridge this gap, we propose GALA (Graph Alignment for Localization in APR), a framework that shifts multimodal APR from implicit semantic guessing to explicit structural reasoning. GALA operates in four stages: it first constructs an Image UI Graph to capture visual elements and their structural relationships; then performs file-level alignment by cross-referencing this UI graph with repository-level structures (e.g., file references) to locate candidate files; next conducts function-level alignment by reasoning over fine-grained code dependencies (e.g., call graphs) to precisely ground visual elements to corresponding code components; and finally performs patch generation within the grounded code context based on the aligned files and functions. By systematically enforcing both semantic and relational consistency across modalities, GALA establishes a highly accurate visual-to-code mapping. Evaluations on the SWE-bench Multimodal benchmark demonstrate that GALA achieves state-of-the-art performance, highlighting the effectiveness of hierarchical structural alignment.
title GALA: Multimodal Graph Alignment for Bug Localization in Automated Program Repair
topic Software Engineering
D.2.5; I.2.7; I.4.8
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08089