Concurrent breakpoints

In program debugging, reproducibility of bugs is a key requirement. Unfortunately, bugs in concurrent programs are notoriously difficult to reproduce because bugs due to concurrency happen under very specific thread schedules and the likelihood of taking such corner-case schedules during regular testing is very low. We propose concurrent breakpoints, a light-weight and programmatic way to make a concurrency bug reproducible. We describe a mechanism that helps to hit a concurrent breakpoint in a concurrent execution with high probability. We have implemented concurrent breakpoints as a light-weight library for Java and C/C++ programs. We have used the implementation to deterministically reproduce several known non-deterministic bugs in real-world concurrent Java and C/C++ programs with almost 100% probability. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.5 [Software Engineering]: Testing and Debugging General Terms Languages, Reliability

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: PPOPP
• Authors: Chang-Seo Park, Koushik Sen
• Keywords: C Programs, Concurrent Execution, Concurrent Programs, Distributed And Parallel Computing, PPOPP 2012