research-article

Abstract semantic differencing via speculative correlation

Authors:

Nimrod Partush,

Eran YahavAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages & Applications

Pages 811 - 828

https://doi.org/10.1145/2660193.2660245

Published: 15 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

We address the problem of computing semantic differences between a program and a patched version of the program. Our goal is to obtain a precise characterization of the difference between program versions, or establish their equivalence. We focus on infinite-state numerical programs, and use abstract interpretation to compute an over-approximation of program differences.

Computing differences and establishing equivalence under abstraction requires abstracting relationships between variables in the two programs. Towards that end, we use a correlating abstract domain to compute a sound approximation of these relationships which captures semantic difference. This approximation can be computed over any interleaving of the two programs. However, the choice of interleaving can significantly affect precision. We present a speculative search algorithm that aims to find an interleaving of the two programs with minimal abstract semantic difference. This method is unique as it allows the analysis to dynamically alternate between several interleavings.

We have implemented our approach and applied it to real-world examples including patches from Git, GNU Coreutils, as well as a few handpicked patches from the Linux kernel and the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Our evaluation shows that we compute precise approximations of semantic differences, and report few false differences.

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Hagens KKop C(2024)Rewriting Induction for Higher-Order Constrained Term Rewriting SystemsLogic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_12(202-219)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
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Index Terms

Abstract semantic differencing via speculative correlation
1. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Program analysis
    2. Program semantics

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cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages & Applications

October 2014

946 pages

ISBN:9781450325851

DOI:10.1145/2660193

General Chair:
Andrew Black
Portland State University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Todd Millstein
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 49, Issue 10
OOPSLA '14
October 2014
907 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2714064
Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Published: 15 October 2014

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SPLASH '14: Conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 20 - 24, 2014

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OOPSLA '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 52 of 186 submissions, 28%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,244 submissions, 22%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1145/3656462
Glock JPichler JPinzger M(2024)PASDAJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112037213:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112037
Hagens KKop C(2024)Rewriting Induction for Higher-Order Constrained Term Rewriting SystemsLogic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_12(202-219)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_12
Jakobs MPollandt T(2023)diffDP: Using Data Dependencies and Properties in Difference Verification with ConditionsiFM 202310.1007/978-3-031-47705-8_3(40-61)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47705-8_3
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Jakobs M(2021)PEQCHECK: Localized and Context-aware Checking of Functional Equivalence2021 IEEE/ACM 9th International Conference on Formal Methods in Software Engineering (FormaliSE)10.1109/FormaliSE52586.2021.00019(130-140)Online publication date: May-2021
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Antonopoulos TKoskinen ELe T(2019)Specification and inference of trace refinement relationsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33606043:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2019
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Hanam QMesbah AHolmes R(2019)Aiding Code Change Understanding with Semantic Change Impact Analysis2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2019.00031(202-212)Online publication date: Sep-2019
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Sousa MDillig ILahiri S(2018)Verified three-way program mergeProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32765352:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2018
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