Breadcrumbs: Efficient Context Sensitivity for Dynamic Bug Detection Analyses

Calling context--the set of active methods on the stack--is critical for understanding the dynamic behavior of large programs. Dynamic program analysis tools, however, are almost exclusively context insensitive because of the prohibitive cost of representing calling contexts at run time. Deployable dynamic analyses, in particular, are limited to reporting only static program locations. This paper presents Breadcrumbs, an efficient technique for recording and reporting dynamic calling contexts. It builds on an existing technique for computing a compact (one word) encoding of each calling context that client analyses can use in place of a program location. The key feature of our system is a search algorithm that can reconstruct a calling context from its encoding using only a static call graph and a small amount of dynamic information collected in cold methods. Breadcrumbs requires no offline training or program modifications, and handles all language features, including dynamic class l...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: PLDI
• Authors: Michael D. Bond, Graham Z. Baker, Samuel Z. Guyer
• Keywords: Deployable Dynamic Analyses, Dynamic Calling Contexts, Dynamic Program Analysis, PLDI 2010, Programming Languages