research-article

Forcing small models of conditions on program interleaving for detection of concurrent bugs

Authors:

Yarden Nir-Buchbinder,

Rachel Tzoref-Brill,

Aviad Zlotnick,

Eitan FarchiAuthors Info & Claims

PADTAD '09: Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Systems: Testing, Analysis, and Debugging

Article No.: 7, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/1639622.1639629

Published: 19 July 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Is it possible to efficiently reveal concurrency bugs by forcing a well selected set of conditions on program interleaving? To study this general question, we defined two simple models of conditions on program interleaving targeted at the insufficient-synchronization-scope bug pattern. We analyzed these models with respect to several buggy programs. We also implemented an algorithm that tries to force one of these models. The analysis of these models shows that relatively small models can detect insufficient-synchronization-scope bugs. The experiments with the forcing algorithm demonstrated the ability of finding the bug with high efficiency: the average testing time till the bug is detected was improved by factors of 7 and 73 compared with the average time required by a dynamic exploration that did not incorporate the forcing algorithm.

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Cited By

Taheri SGopalakrishnan G(2021)GoAT: Automated Concurrency Analysis and Debugging Tool for Go2021 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC)10.1109/IISWC53511.2021.00023(138-150)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/IISWC53511.2021.00023
Guo JLi ZShi CZhao R(2020)Thread Scheduling Sequence Generation Based on All Synchronization Pair Coverage CriteriaInternational Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering10.1142/S021819402050005930:01(97-118)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218194020500059
Bianchi FMargara APezze M(2018)A Survey of Recent Trends in Testing Concurrent Software SystemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2017.270708944:8(747-783)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2017.2707089
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Forcing small models of conditions on program interleaving for detection of concurrent bugs
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

PADTAD '09: Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Systems: Testing, Analysis, and Debugging

July 2009

99 pages

ISBN:9781605586557

DOI:10.1145/1639622

Conference Chairs:
Ganesh Gopalakrishnan
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
,
Eitan Farchi
IBM R&D Labs, Haifa, Israel
,
Eric Mercer
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 July 2009

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Sixth Framework Programme

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ISSTA '09

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ISSTA '09: International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

July 19 - 20, 2009

Illinois, Chicago

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ISSTA '25

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34th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

June 25 - 28, 2025

Trondheim , Norway

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Cited By

Taheri SGopalakrishnan G(2021)GoAT: Automated Concurrency Analysis and Debugging Tool for Go2021 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC)10.1109/IISWC53511.2021.00023(138-150)Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/IISWC53511.2021.00023
Guo JLi ZShi CZhao R(2020)Thread Scheduling Sequence Generation Based on All Synchronization Pair Coverage CriteriaInternational Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering10.1142/S021819402050005930:01(97-118)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218194020500059
Bianchi FMargara APezze M(2018)A Survey of Recent Trends in Testing Concurrent Software SystemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2017.270708944:8(747-783)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2017.2707089
Křena BPluháčková HUr SVojnar T(2018)Prediction of Coverage of Expensive Concurrency Metrics Using Cheaper MetricsComputer Aided Systems Theory – EUROCAST 201710.1007/978-3-319-74727-9_12(99-108)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74727-9_12
Abbaspour Asadollah SSundmark DEldh SHansson HAfzal W(2017)10 Years of research on debugging concurrent and multicore softwareSoftware Quality Journal10.1007/s11219-015-9301-725:1(49-82)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11219-015-9301-7
Fiedor JHrubá VKřena BLetko ZUr SVojnar T(2015)Advances in noise-based testing of concurrent softwareSoftware Testing, Verification & Reliability10.1002/stvr.154625:3(272-309)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/stvr.1546
Hong SStaats MAhn JKim MRothermel G(2015)Are concurrency coverage metrics effective for testingSoftware Testing, Verification & Reliability10.1002/stvr.153925:4(334-370)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/stvr.1539
Jyoti AArora V(2014)Debugging and visualization techniques for multithreaded programs: A surveyInternational Conference on Recent Advances and Innovations in Engineering (ICRAIE-2014)10.1109/ICRAIE.2014.6909202(1-6)Online publication date: May-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRAIE.2014.6909202
Hong SStaats MAhn JKim MRothermel G(2013)The Impact of Concurrent Coverage Metrics on Testing EffectivenessProceedings of the 2013 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation10.1109/ICST.2013.32(232-241)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICST.2013.32
Fiedor JVojnar TBradbury JSouza S(2012)Noise-based testing and analysis of multi-threaded C/C++ programs on the binary levelProceedings of the 2012 Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Systems: Testing, Analysis, and Debugging10.1145/2338967.2336813(36-46)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2338967.2336813
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