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Coverity Uncovers Concurrency Errors


By Jennifer deJong
February 1, 2006 — 
San Francisco-based Coverity has updated its source code analyzer, enabling it to detect errors associated with concurrent programming.

Prevent 3.2, which the San Francisco-based company announced late last year, finds errors such as double locks, missing locks and incorrect lock ordering in C/C++ source code, said Coverity product manager Andy Yang. “They are not everyday types of bugs. But when they happen, they are hard to track down.”

Locks and unlocks are used to manage shared functions, variables and resources in applications that execute multiple threads concurrently. Applying locks and unlocks effectively in complex applications is difficult and requires a high degree of developer skill, said Yang. Errors are typically the result of incorrect use, he said. Prevent addresses such errors by tracking, for example, how a piece of memory is locked by function. It can follow complex paths through the code to find errors such as a missing unlock, or a lock that has been applied twice, or in the wrong order, said Yang. The tool identifies and provides information about errors, and recommends fixes.

Also new to 3.2 is integration with the Eclipse framework, IBM Rational Software Development Platform and Wind River Workbench IDE, as well as more detailed reports, which can compare, for example, defect rates across multiple builds and releases, said Yang.

A key reason why concurrent programming errors are hard to detect is that they are difficult to reproduce in the testing process. They typically don’t manifest themselves until the application is deployed, said Yang. By scanning source code, Prevent can help detect such errors early in the development process. “But we are not saying we can find all concurrency problems. That is impossible,” he said.

Coverity competitor Fortify, in Palo Alto, Calif., also can pinpoint problems associated with concurrent programming, including double locks and race conditions, which can occur when threads of operation contend for the same resources, said Fortify CTO Roger Thornton. Source code analysis is not the only way to find concurrent errors. For instance, testing tools such as Compuware’s DevPartner Studio can detect how parts of an application are locking different resources, said Ken Cowan, a product line manager for the Detroit-based company.


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