42 variability bugs in the linux kernel: a qualitative analysis

Iago Abal, Claus Brabrand, Andrzej Wasowski

Abstract

Feature-sensitive verification pursues effective analysis of the exponentially many variants of a program family. However, researchers lack examples of concrete bugs induced by variability, occurring in real large-scale systems. Such a collection of bugs is a requirement for goal-oriented research, serving to evaluate tool implementations of feature-sensitive analyses by testing them on real bugs. We present a qualitative study of 42 variability bugs collected from bug-fixing commits to the Linux kernel repository. We analyze each of the bugs, and record the results in a database. In addition, we provide self-contained simplified C99 versions of the bugs, facilitating understanding and tool evaluation. Our study provides insights into the nature and occurrence of variability bugs in a large C software system, and shows in what ways variability affects and increases the complexity of software bugs.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{Abal-al:ASE14,
  author    = {Iago Abal and
               Claus Brabrand and
               Andrzej Wasowski},
  title     = {42 variability bugs in the linux kernel: a qualitative analysis},
  booktitle = {ASE},
  pages     = {421--432},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year      = {2014},
}

42 variability bugs in the linux kernel: a qualitative analysis

Abstract

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