The Impact of Generic Data Structures: Decoding the Role of Lists in the Linux Kernel
The increasing adoption of the Linux kernel has been sustained by a large and constant maintenance effort, performed by a wide and heterogeneous base of contributors. One important problem that maintainers face in any code base is the rapid understanding of complex data structures. The Linux kernel is written in the C language, which enables the definition of arbitrarily uninformative datatype, via the use of casts and pointer arithmetic, of which doubly linked lists are a prominent example. In this paper, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of such lists, for expressivity, for code understanding, and for code reliability. Based on our observations, we have developed a toolset that includes inference of descriptive list types and a tool for list visualization. Our tools identify more than 10.000 list fields and variables in recent Linux kernel releases and succeeds in typing more than 90%. We show how these tools could have been used to detect previously fixed bugs and identify 6 new ones.
Tue 22 SepDisplayed time zone: (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time change
08:00 - 09:00 | Maintenance and Evolution (2)Research Papers / Journal-first Papers at Koala Chair(s): Cuiyun Gao Harbin Institute of Technology | ||
08:00 20mTalk | M3: Semantic API Migrations Research Papers Bruce Collie University of Edinburgh, Philip Ginsbach GitHub Software UK, Jackson Woodruff University of Edinburgh, Ajitha Rajan University of Edinburgh, Michael F. P. O'Boyle University of Edinburgh Pre-print Media Attached | ||
08:20 20mTalk | The Impact of Generic Data Structures: Decoding the Role of Lists in the Linux Kernel Research Papers Pre-print | ||
08:40 20mTalk | Game-theoretic Analysis of Development Practices: Challenges and Opportunities Journal-first Papers Carlos Gavidia-Calderon University College London, Federica Sarro University College London, UK, Mark Harman University College London, UK, Earl T. Barr University College London, UK Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached |