GAMBIT: effective unit testing for concurrency libraries

Abstract

As concurrent programming becomes prevalent, software providers are investing in concurrency libraries to improve programmer productivity. Concurrency libraries improve productivity by hiding error-prone, low-level synchronization from programmers and providing higher-level concurrent abstractions. Testing such libraries is difficult, however, because concurrency failures often manifest only under particular scheduling circumstances. Current best testing practices are often inadequate: heuristic-guided fuzzing is not systematic, systematic schedule enumeration does not find bugs quickly, and stress testing is neither systematic nor fast.