RacerD detects hard-to-find race conditions in Java code

Facebook has begun offering broad access to RacerD, a tool intended to tackle the longstanding problem of race conditions in software.RacerD had been available as a prototype, accessible in Facebookrsquo;s open source code base only through a series of backdoor options, said codeveloper Sam Blackshear, a Facebook research scientist. Now, the tool will run by default in Facebookrsquo;s open source Infer static analysis tool for bug detection.
Initially, RacerD is available only for Java code.

But plans call for expanding coverage to other languages, including C++.[ The new Java versions are here! Learn everything you need to know about whatrsquo;s new in Java SE 9 and whatrsquo;s new in Java EE 8. | The big 4 Java IDEs reviewed: See how Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, and IntelliJ IDEA stack up. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorldrsquo;s App Dev Report newsletter. ]With race conditions, overlapping processes trying to access the same data concurrently can cause conflicts in programs.

These concurrency errors can be difficult to debug or even reproduce. “This has really been a hard problemrdquo; in computing for about 50 years, said Peter Orsquo;Hearn, a research scientist on the Infer team and co-author of RacerD.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here