What change history tells us about thread synchronization

Rui Gu, Guoliang Jin, Linhai Song, Linjie Zhu, Shan Lu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

Multi-threaded programs are pervasive, yet difficult to write. Missing proper synchronization leads to correctness bugs and over synchronization leads to performance problems. To improve the correctness and efficiency of multi-threaded software, we need a better understanding of synchronization challenges faced by real-world developers. This paper studies the code repositories of open-source multi-threaded software projects to obtain a broad and indepth view of how developers handle synchronizations. We first examine how critical sections are changed when software evolves by checking over 250,000 revisions of four representative open-source software projects. The findings help us answer questions like how often synchronization is an afterthought for developers; whether it is difficult for developers to decide critical section boundaries and lock variables; and what are real-world over-synchronization problems. We then conduct case studies to better understand (1) how critical sections are changed to solve performance problems (i.e. over-synchronization issues) and (2) how software changes lead to synchronization-related correctness problems (i.e. concurrency bugs). This in-depth study shows that tool support is needed to help developers tackle over-synchronization problems; it also shows that concurrency bug avoidance, detection, and testing can be improved through better awareness of code revision history.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2015 10th Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, ESEC/FSE 2015 - Proceedings
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages426-438
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9781450336758
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 30 2015
Event10th Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, ESEC/FSE 2015 - Bergamo, Italy
Duration: Aug 30 2015Sep 4 2015

Publication series

Name2015 10th Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, ESEC/FSE 2015 - Proceedings

Other

Other10th Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, ESEC/FSE 2015
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityBergamo
Period8/30/159/4/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software

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