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research-article

42 variability bugs in the linux kernel: a qualitative analysis

Authors:

Claus Brabrand,

Andrzej WasowskiAuthors Info & Claims

ASE '14: Proceedings of the 29th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

Pages 421 - 432

https://doi.org/10.1145/2642937.2642990

Published: 15 September 2014 Publication History

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.

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Cited By

Jiang MJiang JWu TMa ZLuo XZhou Y(2024)Understanding Vulnerability Inducing Commits of the Linux KernelACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/367245233:7(1-28)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672452
Liu DYan YFan HFeng Y(2024)Mining Fix Patterns for System Interaction BugsProceedings of the 15th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware10.1145/3671016.3671398(367-376)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3671016.3671398
Baranov EChakraborty SLegay AMeel KVinodchandran N(2024)A Scalable $t$t-Wise Coverage Estimator: Algorithms and ApplicationsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.341991950:8(2021-2039)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2024.3419919
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

42 variability bugs in the linux kernel: a qualitative analysis

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASE '14: Proceedings of the 29th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

September 2014

934 pages

ISBN:9781450330138

DOI:10.1145/2642937

General Chair:
Ivica Crnkovic
Mälardalen University, Sweden
,
Program Chairs:
Marsha Chechik
University of Toronto, Canada
,
Paul Grünbacher
Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence
SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
Mälardalen University: Mälardalen University
IEEE CS

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 15 September 2014

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ASE '14

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SIGSOFT
Mälardalen University

ASE '14: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

September 15 - 19, 2014

Vasteras, Sweden

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ASE '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 82 of 337 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 82 of 337 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Jiang MJiang JWu TMa ZLuo XZhou Y(2024)Understanding Vulnerability Inducing Commits of the Linux KernelACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/367245233:7(1-28)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672452
Liu DYan YFan HFeng Y(2024)Mining Fix Patterns for System Interaction BugsProceedings of the 15th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware10.1145/3671016.3671398(367-376)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3671016.3671398
Baranov EChakraborty SLegay AMeel KVinodchandran N(2024)A Scalable $t$t-Wise Coverage Estimator: Algorithms and ApplicationsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.341991950:8(2021-2039)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2024.3419919
Mahmood WÇalıklı GStrüber DLämmel RMukelabai MBerger T(2024)Virtual Platform: Effective and Seamless Variability Management for Software SystemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.340622450:11(2753-2785)Online publication date: Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2024.3406224
Liu ZLin ZChen YWu YZou YMu DXing X(2024)Towards Unveiling Exploitation Potential With Multiple Error Behaviors for Kernel BugsIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2023.324617021:1(93-109)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2023.3246170
Huang HWang HRao JWu SFan HYu CJin HSuo KPan L(2024)vKernel: Enhancing Container Isolation via Private Code and DataIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2024.338398873:7(1711-1723)Online publication date: Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2024.3383988
Baranov ELegay A(2024)Baital: Sampling Configurable Systems with high t-wise coverageScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2024.103209(103209)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2024.103209
Timperley Cvan der Hoorn GSantos ADeshpande HWąsowski A(2024)ROBUST: 221 bugs in the Robot Operating SystemEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-024-10440-029:3Online publication date: 23-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-024-10440-0
Silva-Junior DGraciano-Neto Vde-Freitas DLeitão-Junior PKassab M(2023)A Systematic Mapping of the Proposition of Benchmarks in the Software Testing and Debugging DomainSoftware10.3390/software20400212:4(447-475)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/software2040021
Santos DSant`Anna CRibeiro M(2023)An Experiment on How Feature Dependent Variables Affect Configurable System ComprehensibilityProceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3622748.3622755(61-70)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
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