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Unfolding based automated testing of multithreaded programs

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Abstract

In multithreaded programs both environment input data and the nondeterministic interleavings of concurrent events can affect the behavior of the program. One approach to systematically explore the nondeterminism caused by input data is dynamic symbolic execution. For testing multithreaded programs we present a new approach that combines dynamic symbolic execution with unfoldings, a method originally developed for Petri nets but also applied to many other models of concurrency. We provide an experimental comparison of our new approach with existing algorithms combining dynamic symbolic execution and partial order reductions and show that the new algorithm can explore the reachable control states of each thread with a significantly smaller number of test runs. In some cases the reduction to the number of test runs can be even exponential allowing programs with long test executions or hard-to-solve constraints generated by symbolic execution to be tested more efficiently. In addition we show that our algorithm generates a structure describing different interleavings from which deadlocks can be detected efficiently as well.

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Notes

  1. Thread join can be implemented similarly as locks by assuming that a thread holds a shared resource initially and releases it upon termination. If we assume that wait and notify can be called only if a corresponding lock is held by a thread, then the algorithm explores all possible orders of wait and notify calls because the algorithm executes all interleavings of acquires of related locks.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been financially supported by Tekes - Finnish Agency for Technology and Innovation, ARTEMIS-JU and Academy of Finland (Projects 128050 and 139402).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Science, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, Aalto University, Box 15400, 00076 , Aalto, Finland

    Kari Kähkönen, Olli Saarikivi & Keijo Heljanko

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  1. Kari Kähkönen
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  2. Olli Saarikivi
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  3. Keijo Heljanko
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Correspondence to Kari Kähkönen.

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Kähkönen, K., Saarikivi, O. & Heljanko, K. Unfolding based automated testing of multithreaded programs. Autom Softw Eng 22, 475–515 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-014-0150-6

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