SPDebugger: A Fine-Grained Deterministic Debugger for Concurrency Code

Ziyi LIN; Yilei ZHOU; Hao ZHONG; Yuting CHEN; Haibo YU; Jianjun ZHAO

doi:10.1587/transinf.2016EDP7388

SPDebugger: A Fine-Grained Deterministic Debugger for Concurrency Code

Ziyi LIN, Yilei ZHOU, Hao ZHONG, Yuting CHEN, Haibo YU, Jianjun ZHAO

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When debugging bugs, programmers often prepare test cases to reproduce buggy behaviours. However, for concurrent programs, test cases alone are typically insufficient to reproduce buggy behaviours, due to the nondeterminism of multi-threaded executions. In literature, various approaches have been proposed to reproduce buggy behaviours for concurrency bugs deterministically, but to the best of our knowledge, they are still limited. In particular, we have recognized three debugging scenarios from programming practice, but existing approaches can handle only one of the scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, called SPDebugger, that provides finer-grained thread controlling over test cases, programs under test, and even third party library code, to reproduce the predesigned thread execution schedule. The evaluation shows that SPDebugger handles more debugging scenarios than the state-of-the-art tool, called IMUnit, with similar human effort.

Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E100-D No.3 pp.473-482

Publication Date: 2017/03/01

Publicized: 2016/12/20

Online ISSN: 1745-1361

DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2016EDP7388

Type of Manuscript: PAPER

Category: Software Engineering

Authors

Ziyi LIN
  Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Yilei ZHOU
  Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Hao ZHONG
  Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Yuting CHEN
  Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Haibo YU
  Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Jianjun ZHAO
  Kyushu University

Keyword

concurrency, debug, deterministic reproduction

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Ziyi LIN, Yilei ZHOU, Hao ZHONG, Yuting CHEN, Haibo YU, Jianjun ZHAO, "SPDebugger: A Fine-Grained Deterministic Debugger for Concurrency Code" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information, vol. E100-D, no. 3, pp. 473-482, March 2017, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2016EDP7388.
Abstract: When debugging bugs, programmers often prepare test cases to reproduce buggy behaviours. However, for concurrent programs, test cases alone are typically insufficient to reproduce buggy behaviours, due to the nondeterminism of multi-threaded executions. In literature, various approaches have been proposed to reproduce buggy behaviours for concurrency bugs deterministically, but to the best of our knowledge, they are still limited. In particular, we have recognized three debugging scenarios from programming practice, but existing approaches can handle only one of the scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, called SPDebugger, that provides finer-grained thread controlling over test cases, programs under test, and even third party library code, to reproduce the predesigned thread execution schedule. The evaluation shows that SPDebugger handles more debugging scenarios than the state-of-the-art tool, called IMUnit, with similar human effort.
URL: https://globals.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2016EDP7388/_p

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@ARTICLE{e100-d_3_473,
author={Ziyi LIN, Yilei ZHOU, Hao ZHONG, Yuting CHEN, Haibo YU, Jianjun ZHAO, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={SPDebugger: A Fine-Grained Deterministic Debugger for Concurrency Code},
year={2017},
volume={E100-D},
number={3},
pages={473-482},
abstract={When debugging bugs, programmers often prepare test cases to reproduce buggy behaviours. However, for concurrent programs, test cases alone are typically insufficient to reproduce buggy behaviours, due to the nondeterminism of multi-threaded executions. In literature, various approaches have been proposed to reproduce buggy behaviours for concurrency bugs deterministically, but to the best of our knowledge, they are still limited. In particular, we have recognized three debugging scenarios from programming practice, but existing approaches can handle only one of the scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, called SPDebugger, that provides finer-grained thread controlling over test cases, programs under test, and even third party library code, to reproduce the predesigned thread execution schedule. The evaluation shows that SPDebugger handles more debugging scenarios than the state-of-the-art tool, called IMUnit, with similar human effort.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2016EDP7388},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={March},}

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TY - JOUR
TI - SPDebugger: A Fine-Grained Deterministic Debugger for Concurrency Code
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 473
EP - 482
AU - Ziyi LIN
AU - Yilei ZHOU
AU - Hao ZHONG
AU - Yuting CHEN
AU - Haibo YU
AU - Jianjun ZHAO
PY - 2017
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2016EDP7388
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E100-D
IS - 3
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - March 2017
AB - When debugging bugs, programmers often prepare test cases to reproduce buggy behaviours. However, for concurrent programs, test cases alone are typically insufficient to reproduce buggy behaviours, due to the nondeterminism of multi-threaded executions. In literature, various approaches have been proposed to reproduce buggy behaviours for concurrency bugs deterministically, but to the best of our knowledge, they are still limited. In particular, we have recognized three debugging scenarios from programming practice, but existing approaches can handle only one of the scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, called SPDebugger, that provides finer-grained thread controlling over test cases, programs under test, and even third party library code, to reproduce the predesigned thread execution schedule. The evaluation shows that SPDebugger handles more debugging scenarios than the state-of-the-art tool, called IMUnit, with similar human effort.
ER -