Search arXiv⌕ Search

arXiv · 2609.38335

E2E-SWE: Benchmarking LLMs on Building Working Codebases from Scratch

Abstract

Coding agents powered by large language models (LLMs) are evolving from making localized code changes to developing complete software repositories. However, evaluating repository-scale generation remains challenging: tasks must demand system-level reasoning while ensuring that all evaluated behaviors are precisely specified and independent of any particular implementation. We introduce E2E-SWE, a benchmark for evaluating whether coding agents can build complete, functional software repositories end to end. E2E-SWE contains 186 whole-repository generation tasks spanning 11 programming languages. Given only a natural-language specification and an empty workspace, an agent must implement a complete, installable project that satisfies a comprehensive suite of hidden tests. Each task is constructed by a software engineer in collaboration with an LLM; together, they develop the test suite and a corresponding implementation-independent specification. To ensure that tasks are well specified and practically solvable, we further subject them to an iterative verification process in which autonomous agents audit and repair task defects using static inspection and failures observed from real model rollouts. Evaluating 13 frontier models, we find substantial variation in end-to-end repository generation ability, with pass@1 ranging from 11.7% to 67.7%, providing strong model differentiation while leaving considerable headroom for future progress. Analysis of agent trajectories further reveals long, front-loaded reasoning patterns, highlighting the planning and system-level reasoning required to construct working codebases from scratch.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Hantian Ding, Chloe Bi, Jiacheng Zhu, John Yang, Matt Deitke, Pengcheng Yin, Zijian Wang, Rui Hou. 2026-09-29. E2E-SWE: Benchmarking LLMs on Building Working Codebases from Scratch. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38335

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

CodeArena: A Collective Evaluation Platform for LLM Code Generation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have reshaped code generation by synergizing their exceptional comprehension of natural language and programming syntax, thereby substantially boosting developer productivity. These advancements have prompted numerous efforts to quantitatively evaluate their coding capabilities. However, persistent challenges, such as benchmark leakage, data dissipation, and limited system accessibility, continue to impede a timely and accurate assessment. To address these limitations, we introduce CodeArena, an online evaluation framework tailored for LLM code generation. The key innovation is a collective evaluation mechanism, which dynamically recalibrates individual model scores based on the holistic performance of all participating models, mitigating score biases caused by widespread benchmark leakage. In addition, CodeArena ensures open access to all submitted solutions and test cases and provides automation-friendly APIs to streamline the code evaluation workflow. Our main contributions are: (1) a collective evaluation system for unbiased assessment, (2) a public repository of solutions and test cases, and (3) automation-ready APIs for seamless integration.

cs.SE↗

Towards Functional Correctness of Code Models with Selective Generation

The hallucination of code generation models hinders their applicability to systems requiring higher safety standards. One critical bottleneck in addressing code hallucination is the difficulty of identifying the functional correctness of generated code, due to its unnatural form. We address this core bottleneck by automatically generating unit tests using dynamic code analysis tools, leveraging the \emph{executable nature} of code. Accordingly, we propose a \emph{selective code generator} that abstains from uncertain generations -- based on the functional correctness evaluated by generated unit tests -- to theoretically control the correctness among non-abstained answers, \ie the false discovery rate. Finally, we propose to use generated unit tests in evaluation as well as in learning for precise code evaluation, calling this paradigm \emph{FuzzEval}. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method along with the controllability of code hallucination and reasonable selection efficiency.

cs.SE↗

Red Teaming Program Repair Agents: When Correct Patches can Hide Vulnerabilities

LLM-based agents are increasingly deployed for software maintenance tasks such as automated program repair (APR). APR agents automatically fetch GitHub issues and use backend LLMs to generate patches that fix the reported bugs. However, existing work primarily focuses on the functional correctness of APR-generated patches, whether they pass hidden or regression tests, while largely ignoring potential security risks. Given the openness of platforms like GitHub, where any user can raise issues and participate in discussions, an important question arises: Can an adversarial user submit a valid issue on GitHub that misleads an LLM-based agent into generating a functionally correct but vulnerable patch? To answer this question, we propose SWExploit, which generates adversarial issue statements designed to make APR agents produce patches that are functionally correct yet vulnerable. SWExploit operates in three main steps: (1) program analysis to identify potential injection points for vulnerable payloads; (2) adversarial issue generation to provide misleading reproduction and error information while preserving the original issue semantics; and (3) iterative refinement of the adversarial issue statements based on the outputs of the APR agents. Empirical evaluation on three agent pipelines and five backend LLMs shows that SWExploit can produce patches that are both functionally correct and vulnerable (the attack success rate on the correct patch could reach 0.91, whereas the baseline ASRs are all below 0.20). Based on our evaluation, we are the first to challenge the traditional assumption that a patch passing all tests is inherently reliable and secure, highlighting critical limitations in the current evaluation paradigm for APR agents.

cs.SE↗