Finding DU-Paths for Testing of Multi-Tasking Real-Time Systems using WCET Analysis

Memory corruption is one of the most common software failures. For sequential software and multitasking software with synchronized data accesses, it has been shown that program faults causing memory corruption can be detected by analyzing the relations between defines and uses of variables (DU-based testing). However, such methods are insufficient in preemptive systems, since they lack the ability to detect inter-task shared variable dependencies. In this paper, we propose the use of a system level shared variable DU analysis of preemptive multi-tasking real-time software. By deriving temporal attributes of each access to shared data using WCET analysis, and combining this information with the real-time schedule information, our method also detects inter-task shared variable dependencies. The paper also describes how we extended the SWEET tool to derive these temporal attributes.