research-article

MemInsight: platform-independent memory debugging for JavaScript

Authors:

Simon Holm Jensen,

Manu Sridharan,

Satish ChandraAuthors Info & Claims

ESEC/FSE 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 10th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering

Pages 345 - 356

https://doi.org/10.1145/2786805.2786860

Published: 30 August 2015 Publication History

Abstract

JavaScript programs often suffer from memory issues that can either hurt performance or eventually cause memory exhaustion. While existing snapshot-based profiling tools can be helpful, the information provided is limited to the coarse granularity at which snapshots can be taken. We present MemInsight, a tool that provides detailed, time-varying analysis of the memory behavior of JavaScript applications, including web applications. MemInsight is platform independent and runs on unmodified JavaScript engines. It employs tuned source-code instrumentation to generate a trace of memory allocations and accesses, and it leverages modern browser features to track precise information for DOM (document object model) objects. It also computes exact object lifetimes without any garbage collector assistance, and exposes this information in an easily-consumable manner for further analysis. We describe several client analyses built into MemInsight, including detection of possible memory leaks and opportunities for stack allocation and object inlining. An experimental evaluation showed that with no modifications to the runtime, MemInsight was able to expose memory issues in several real-world applications.

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Cited By

Wichmann PSee AFederrath H(2024)SecPassInput: Towards Secure Memory and Password Handling in Web ApplicationsICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection10.1007/978-3-031-56326-3_17(236-249)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56326-3_17
Shahoor AKhamit AYi JKim DBissyandé TKlein JBird CSarro F(2023)LeakPair: Proactive Repairing of Memory Leaks in Single Page Web ApplicationsProceedings of the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00097(1175-1187)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00097
Sun HRosa ABonetta DBinder W(2021)Automatically Assessing and Extending Code Coverage for NPM Packages2021 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automation of Software Test (AST)10.1109/AST52587.2021.00013(40-49)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/AST52587.2021.00013
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Index Terms

MemInsight: platform-independent memory debugging for JavaScript
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ESEC/FSE 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 10th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering

August 2015

1068 pages

ISBN:9781450336758

DOI:10.1145/2786805

General Chair:
Elisabetta Di Nitto
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Harman
University College London, UK
,
Patrick Heymans
University of Namur, Belgium

Copyright © 2015 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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Published: 30 August 2015

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ESEC/FSE'15

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ESEC/FSE'15: Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

August 30 - September 4, 2015

Bergamo, Italy

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Cited By

Wichmann PSee AFederrath H(2024)SecPassInput: Towards Secure Memory and Password Handling in Web ApplicationsICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection10.1007/978-3-031-56326-3_17(236-249)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56326-3_17
Shahoor AKhamit AYi JKim DBissyandé TKlein JBird CSarro F(2023)LeakPair: Proactive Repairing of Memory Leaks in Single Page Web ApplicationsProceedings of the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00097(1175-1187)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00097
Sun HRosa ABonetta DBinder W(2021)Automatically Assessing and Extending Code Coverage for NPM Packages2021 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automation of Software Test (AST)10.1109/AST52587.2021.00013(40-49)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/AST52587.2021.00013
An KTilevich E(2020)Client Insourcing: Bringing Ops In-House for Seamless Re-engineering of Full-Stack JavaScript ApplicationsProceedings of The Web Conference 202010.1145/3366423.3380105(179-189)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3366423.3380105
Liu YXie JYang JGuo SDeng YLi SWu YLiu YGrundy JLe Goues CLo D(2020)Industry practice of Javascript dynamic analysis on WeChat mini-programsProceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3324884.3421842(1189-1193)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3324884.3421842
Sanchez ADelgado-Perez PMedina-Bulo ISegura S(2020)TANDEM: A Taxonomy and a Dataset of Real-World Performance BugsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.30009288(107214-107228)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3000928
Selakovic M(2020)Actionable Program Analyses for Improving Software PerformanceErnst Denert Award for Software Engineering 201910.1007/978-3-030-58617-1_7(113-140)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58617-1_7
Prasad BParane KTalawar B(2019)Analysis of cache behaviour and software optimizations for faster on-chip network simulationsInternational Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management10.1007/s13198-019-00799-5Online publication date: 14-May-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-019-00799-5
An KTilevich E(2019)Catch & Release: An Approach to Debugging Distributed Full-Stack JavaScript ApplicationsWeb Engineering10.1007/978-3-030-19274-7_32(459-473)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19274-7_32
Akram SSartor JMcKinley KEeckhout L(2018)Write-rationing garbage collection for hybrid memoriesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3296979.319239253:4(62-77)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3296979.3192392
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