Publication detail

Automatically Checking Semantic Equivalence between Versions of Large-Scale C Projects

MALÍK, V. VOJNAR, T.

Original Title

Automatically Checking Semantic Equivalence between Versions of Large-Scale C Projects

Type

conference paper

Language

English

Original Abstract

Motivated by a need of some software projects to ensure semantic stability of some of their core parts, the paper proposes a highly-scalable approach for automatically checking semantic equivalence of different versions of large C projects, with a particular focus on the Linux kernel. The proposed method uses a novel combination of pattern matching with light-weight static analysis and control-flow transformations. Although the method cannot prove equivalence on heavily refactored code, it can compare thousands of functions in minutes while producing a low number of false non-equality verdicts as our experiments show. We implemented our approach in a tool called DiffKemp and we show that DiffKemp, unlike other existing tools, gives practically useful results even on projects of the size of the Linux kernel.

Keywords

semantic equivalence, refactoring, static analysis, semantics-preserving patterns, refactoring patterns

Authors

MALÍK, V.; VOJNAR, T.

Released

25. 5. 2021

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Location

Porto de Galinhas

ISBN

978-1-7281-6837-1

Book

2021 14th IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST)

Pages from

329

Pages to

339

Pages count

11

URL

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9438578

BibTex

@inproceedings{BUT175787,
  author="Viktor {Malík} and Tomáš {Vojnar}",
  title="Automatically Checking Semantic Equivalence between Versions of Large-Scale C Projects",
  booktitle="2021 14th IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST)",
  year="2021",
  pages="329--339",
  publisher="Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
  address="Porto de Galinhas",
  doi="10.1109/ICST49551.2021.00045",
  isbn="978-1-7281-6837-1",
  url="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9438578"
}