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Concurrency bugs in open source software: a case study
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5058-7351
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5032-2310
Ericsson AB, Stockholm, Sweden.
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7235-6888
2017 (English)In: Journal of Internet Services and Applications, ISSN 1867-4828, E-ISSN 1869-0238, Vol. 8, no 1, article id 4Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Concurrent programming puts demands on software debugging and testing, as concurrent software may exhibit problems not present in sequential software, e.g., deadlocks and race conditions. In aiming to increase efficiency and effectiveness of debugging and bug-fixing for concurrent software, a deep understanding of concurrency bugs, their frequency and fixing-times would be helpful. Similarly, to design effective tools and techniques for testing and debugging concurrent software, understanding the differences between non-concurrency and concurrency bugs in real-word software would be useful. This paper presents an empirical study focusing on understanding the differences and similarities between concurrency bugs and other bugs, as well as the differences among various concurrency bug types in terms of their severity and their fixing time, and reproducibility. Our basis is a comprehensive analysis of bug reports covering several generations of five open source software projects. The analysis involves a total of 11860 bug reports from the last decade, including 351 reports related to concurrency bugs. We found that concurrency bugs are different from other bugs in terms of their fixing time and severity while they are similar in terms of reproducibility. Our findings shed light on concurrency bugs and could thereby influence future design and development of concurrent software, their debugging and testing, as well as related tools.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer London , 2017. Vol. 8, no 1, article id 4
Keywords [en]
Apache Accumulo, Apache Hadoop, Apache Oozie, Apache spark, Apache ZooKeeper, Bug severity, Case study, Concurrency bugs, Fixing time, Open source software, Computer programming, Computer software, Concurrency control, Open systems, Software engineering, Software testing, Program debugging
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-35210DOI: 10.1186/s13174-017-0055-2ISI: 000398668000001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85016955041OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-35210DiVA, id: diva2:1089700
Available from: 2017-04-20 Created: 2017-04-20 Last updated: 2024-01-22Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Concurrency Bugs: Characterization, Debugging and Runtime Verification
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Concurrency Bugs: Characterization, Debugging and Runtime Verification
2018 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Concurrent software has been increasingly adopted in recent years, mainly due to the introduction of multicore platforms. However, concurrency bugs are still difficult to test and debug due to their complex interactions involving multiple threads (or tasks). Typically, real world concurrent software has huge state spaces. Thus, testing techniques and handling of concurrency bugs need to focus on exposing the bugs in this large space. However, existing solutions typically do not provide debugging information to developers (and testers) for understanding the bugs.

Our work focuses on improving concurrent software reliability via three contributions: 1) An investigation of concurrent software challenges with the aim to help developers (and testers) to better understand concurrency bugs. We propose a classification of concurrency bugs and discuss observable properties of each type of bug. In addition, we identify a number of gaps in the body of knowledge on concurrent software bugs and their debugging. 2) Exploring concurrency related bugs in real-world software with respect to the reproducibility of bugs, severity of their consequence and effort required to fix them. Our findings here is that concurrency bugs are different from other bugs in terms of their fixing time and severity, while they are similar in terms of reproducibility. 3) A model for monitoring concurrency bugs and the implementation and evaluation of a related runtime verification tool to detect the bugs. In general, runtime verification techniques are used to (a) dynamically verify that the observed behaviour matches specified properties and (b) explicitly recognize understandable behaviors in the considered software. Our implemented tool is used to detect concurrency bugs in embedded software and is in its current form tailored for the FreeRTOS operating system. It helps developers and testers to automatically identify concurrency bugs and subsequently helps to reduce their finding and fixing time.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Västerås: Mälardalen University, 2018
Series
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations, ISSN 1651-4238 ; 278
National Category
Embedded Systems
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-41237 (URN)978-91-7485-412-1 (ISBN)
Public defence
2018-12-04, Kappa, Mälardalens högskola, Västerås, 13:30 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2018-10-29 Created: 2018-10-29 Last updated: 2018-11-02Bibliographically approved

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Abbaspour Asadollah, SaraSundmark, DanielHansson, Hans

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