Abstract
In this paper, we introduce an interactive simulator for programs in the form of LLVM bitcode. The main features of the simulator include precise control over thread scheduling, automatic checkpoints and reverse stepping, support for source-level information about functions and variables in C and C++ programs and structured heap visualisation. Additionally, DivSIM is compatible with DiVM (DIVINE VM) hypercalls, which makes it possible to load, simulate and analyse counterexamples from an existing model checker, and with abstract bitcode generated by LART (LLVM Abstraction and Refinement Tool), making it suitable for direct analysis of abstract and/or symbolic programs and counterexamples.
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Notes
How this is achieved is described in more detail in [20].
A minor technical complication arises from the fact that the formatting function needs to be invoked in the context in which the abstract value exists. However, since debug nodes already carry a reference to the snapshot (program state) which they describe and DiVM can cheaply continue execution from an arbitrary snapshot, this is not a serious problem.
There are actually two implementation choices. The evaluation could be handed off to the term domain itself, the same as for formatting abstract values, though in this case it is more complicated, since the model needs to be passed to the evaluation routine. However, since the model checker needs to be able to evaluate the terms anyway to build the SMT query, it seems reasonable to do the evaluation on the DiVM /DivSIM side.
The behaviour of the program may depend on external factors, such as scheduling choices, user inputs, asynchronous events and so on. In DiVM , these all map to the choose hypercall.
This is often the case in verification-centric tools, partly because it is a simple implementation strategy that builds on the same primitives as the verification tool itself.
This description is necessarily incomplete, being much more concise than the real representation of the program’s state. Including additional information improves completeness, but compromises brevity, which is an important strength of this presentation format.
The typical cause will be an out-of-bound memory access on a stack-allocated variable. In real execution, this is not in itself an error, but will be detected and reported by DiVM , since each local variable is allocated in its own memory object (as discussed in Sect. 3).
The source code of the graphical user interface is available from supplementary materials page at https://divine.fi.muni.cz/2021/sim/.
We speculate that this is the primary reason why interactive simulators (and debuggers in general) are so scarce.
At the time of this writing, work is in progress to provide simple Python bindings for the C++ API, via Boost.Python. We believe the Python API will make DivSIM more accessible to 3rd-party developers.
Supported by anecdotal evidence from working with students, both individually and in a validation & verification course.
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The present paper is an extended version of [19].
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Ročkai, P., Barnat, J. DivSIM , an interactive simulator for LLVM bitcode. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 24, 493–510 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-022-00659-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-022-00659-x