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Checking Concurrency Coding Rules

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Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages (PADL 2025)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 15537))

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Abstract

We present an approach for checking that Java programs correctly use libraries such as java.util.concurrent.locks for synchronizing concurrent tasks. Concretely, the article develops methods to check that the behaviour of a program is in accordance with a set of coding rules that govern the correct usage of the library. Here such coding rules are formalized as Prolog predicates that judge whether the history of interactions between program and library represents correct usage or not. The history of interactions is obtained by tracing the interactions between the program and the library when executing a representative test suite. The approach is evaluated in a case study in which around 200 independent monitor-based Java implementations of a common specification are analysed to check adherence to the concurrency coding rules.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Input parameters are specified using the [i] qualifier; output parameters use the [o] qualifier.

  2. 2.

    Note that the code sketch assumes that every account has a transfer queue.

  3. 3.

    Byteman permits tracing invocation (entry) and exit (return or throw) of a method call.

  4. 4.

    The number of rules vary as the implementations are free to organise the shared state in different ways, and Byteman rules must trace all such accesses.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been partly funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain (SAFER project, ref. PID2019-104735RB-C44).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo s/n, Madrid, Spain

    Lars-Åke Fredlund, Ángel Herranz & Julio Mariño

Authors
  1. Lars-Åke Fredlund
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  2. Ángel Herranz
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  3. Julio Mariño
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lars-Åke Fredlund .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sabanci University, Istanbul, Türkiye

    Esra Erdem

  2. Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Germán Vidal

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Fredlund, LÅ., Herranz, Á., Mariño, J. (2025). Checking Concurrency Coding Rules. In: Erdem, E., Vidal, G. (eds) Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages. PADL 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15537. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-84924-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-84924-4_8

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