Adding error_handling procedural modifiers to SWE smith

[thomaspdl]

Overview

Adds Error Handling Corruption, a new procedural bug generation methodology that removes exception handling mechanisms to expose code to unhandled errors.

Changes

• TryExceptRemover: Removes try/except blocks, exposing code to unhandled exceptions
• AssertRemover: Removes assert statements and validation checks
• RaiseRemover: Replaces raise statements with pass, causing silent failures

Files

• New module: swesmith/bug_gen/error_handling/ (7 files)
• Added constants: CodeProperty.HAS_TRY_EXCEPT, HAS_ASSERT, HAS_RAISE
• Tests: All 10 unit tests passing

Usage

python -m swesmith.bug_gen.error_handling.generate --repo <repo> --seed <seed>

[john-b-yang]

This is awesome, thank you so much @thomaspdl!

Just to confirm, based on the code, it looks like this is a Python specific method?

Would you mind providing a README.md that provides a summary of (1) what kind of bug is being created, (2) any constraints (e.g. only Python?), and (3) example usages?

Feel free to just plug these points into copilot / cursor / claude code or something, and double check that the descriptions are accurate.

If you're interested, would you open to writing a blog post describing this bug gen approach for https://www.swebench.com/blog.html?

[thomaspdl]

thanks for the comments @john-b-yang!

Yes, this is a python only method.

Would you prefer me to add a separate README.md or edit the already existing one?

I will get on the blogpost this week :)

[john-b-yang]

A separate README.md that sits under swesmith/bug_gen/error_handling would be absolutely amazing.

And woo! Very happy to hear you'd be open to a blog post! Just to give you a sense, here's where the content for posts lives under the SWE-bench website.

No rush at all, but when you get around to it, if you could (1) create the post as a markdown file, and include any assets you might want in a subfolder under the same directory, and then (2) make a PR to the SWE-bench website, that'd be awesome.

[thomaspdl]

created the README.md
I'll put the blogpost in a separate PR if that's ok!

[john-b-yang]

Awesome stuff @thomaspdl this is fantastic! Just took a look and I think the changes are fantastic, also just tagged @acrmp to sanity check as well.

And separate PR for blog post sounds great. Would you mind making the PR to this repository? Tysm in advance!

[acrmp]

Hi @thomaspdl, thanks for opening this PR. Excited for these changes!

❓ I had some issues getting these changes to run locally. Where you able to run the new error handling generate included in this PR locally?

❓ Did you consider adding the modifiers and having them available from the existing procedural modification command swesmith.bug_gen.procedural.generate?

Thanks!

[acrmp]

Should these modifiers be instances of the classes rather than as the classes themselves?
I'm seeing an error when attempting to run swesmith.bug_gen.error_handling.generate:

TypeError: ProceduralModifier.can_change() missing 1 required positional argument: 'code_entity'

[acrmp]

Does the PR include the changes to set these code properties when the source files are parsed? I couldn't see these. I would expect them to be necessary to ensure that files are not filtered out by the conditions set on the removal modifiers (see swesmith/bug_gen/adapters/python.py).

[acrmp]

Is repo a positional argument rather than a flag? I think this might be an existing error copied over from the procedural generate.

[acrmp]

Nitpick: the filename of this remover doesn't have the _removal.py suffix that assert_removal.py and raise_removal.py are using.

[acrmp]

Is the case correct here for the included repo profile? Should this beInstagram__MonkeyType.70c3acf6?