Debugging and visualization techniques for multithreaded programs: A survey

Abstract

Multithreaded programs deal with simultaneous execution of multiple threads. There are various bugs that can arise in multithreaded programs. Bugs like deadlock, livelock, race condition and other synchronization faults fall in this category. These bugs are difficult to detect and correct due to non-deterministic nature of multithreaded program execution. This paper presents a critical analysis of these bugs by categorizing them on the basis of their detection techniques. Previously identified techniques visualize bugs, for better understanding of their location and cause. This paper also categorizes bug visualization techniques. By visualizing those bugs, debugging techniques can be easily applied over them. At the end, analysis of various tools for visualizing multithreaded programs is summarized in a table.