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parmasan - a parallel make sanitizer

This toolset can be used to automatically detect possible race conditions in makefiles. It consists of multiple executables:

  • parmasan daemon
  • tracer
  • patched remake (hosted on a separate repository, should be cloned separately)

Prerequisites

  • CMake
  • A C++ Compiler

Building

git clone https://github.com/ispras/parmasan
mkdir parmasan/build
cmake -S parmasan -B parmasan/build
make -C parmasan/build

# Paths to binaries are referred below as follows:
export PARMASAN_BIN="$(pwd)/parmasan/build/daemon/parmasan"
export TRACER_BIN="$(pwd)/parmasan/build/tracer/tracer"

Note: You should also build the parmasan-remake project. It has its own prerequisites:

  • autoconf
  • autopoint
  • pkg-config
  • libreadline-dev
git clone https://github.com/ispras/parmasan-remake
(cd parmasan-remake && autoreconf -f -i)
(cd parmasan-remake && ./configure --with-make-name=make --disable-posix-spawn)
make -C parmasan-remake/lib
make -C parmasan-remake/libdebugger
make -C parmasan-remake make
export REMAKE_BIN=$(pwd)/parmasan-remake/make

How to use

TLDR: To build your project under parmasan, replace your make invocation with the following line:

$PARMASAN_BIN <parmasan flags...> \
	$TRACER_BIN \
	$REMAKE_BIN <make arguments...>

Note: Pay attention to escaping backslashes above. This is a single command, not three.

This command will start the parmasan daemon, the tracer process and the make tool inside one another. After the build, detected races will be located in parmasan-dump.txt file in your current working directory.

Parmasan daemon

Usage: parmasan
	[-o | --output OUTPUT]
	[-a | --append]
	[-i[MODE] | --interactive [MODE]]
	[-d | --dump]
	[-r | --read INPUT]
	[-s | --socket SOCKET]
	[-b<BREAKPOINT> | --break=BREAKPOINT]
	[-B<BREAKPOINT> | --break-not=BREAKPOINT]
	[-w<BREAKPOINT> | --watch=BREAKPOINT]
	[-W<BREAKPOINT> | --watch-not=BREAKPOINT]
	[-- COMMAND [ARGS...]]

When called without COMMAND, parmasan executable starts an interactive shell as a child process, so tracer can be started manually from there.

Note: Don't reset the environment before invoking remake (e.g. if your build command is a script that does something else before invoking remake). The tracer and remake executables expect PARMASAN_DAEMON_SOCK environment variable to be set by parmasan daemon.

CLI Flags:

  • -o | --output OUTPUT: Change the output file. Default is parmasan-dump.txt.

  • -a | --append Append to the output file instead of overwriting it.

  • -i[MODE] | --interactive [MODE] Enable interactive mode. Mode is either NONE, FAST, or SYNC. Default is NONE, implicit value is SYNC. Read more in Using breakpoints section.

  • -d | --dump Dump the build log instead of doing the race condition search. Read more in Recording and replaying a build

  • -r | --read INPUT Read the build log as an input. Read more in Recording and replaying a build

  • -s | --socket SOCKET Change the path for internally used unix socket. Leading $ can be added to use socket in abstract namespace. Default is $parmasan-socket

  • -b<BREAKPOINT> | --break=BREAKPOINT Break on certain events. This flag can only be used if interactive mode is not NONE. Read more in Using breakpoints section.

  • -B<BREAKPOINT> | --break-not=BREAKPOINT Do not break on certain events. This flag can only be used if interactive mode is not NONE. Read more in Using breakpoints section.

  • -w<BREAKPOINT> | --watch=BREAKPOINT Log certain events to the output file. Read more in Using breakpoints section.

  • -W<BREAKPOINT> | --watch-not=BREAKPOINT Do not log certain events to the output file. Read more in Using breakpoints section.

Tracer

The tracer executable only takes a command to be traced.

Usage: tracer COMMAND [ARGS...]

Note: tracer should be launched as a child process of parmasan daemon, either through specifying it as a COMMAND or by using its interactive shell. It won't launch if PARMASAN_DAEMON_SOCK environment variable is not present.

Note: tracer uses ptrace syscall to intercept system calls of the build processes. This can cause trouble under docker or some restricted/old kernels. Make sure it's available on your system.

Note: tracer will not bring an interactive shell if COMMAND is not specified. It's a required argument.

Remake

The patched version of remake have new parmasan-strategy flag:

remake <...> --parmasan-strategy=[env|require|disable]
  • env: (default) - use the parmasan daemon if the PARMASAN_DAEMON_SOCK environment variable is present.
  • require: Always use the parmasan daemon. Stop the build if PARMASAN_DAEMON_SOCK is not present.
  • disable: Ignore PARMASAN_DAEMON_SOCK and act as unpatched remake.

Recording and replaying a build

Replaying a build can be much quicker than restarting the entire build process from scratch.

To record a build, the -d or --dump flag is used. It tells parmasan to dump the build log in the output file instead of doing its usual duty of detecting the race conditions.

$PARMASAN_BIN --dump --output build-log.txt $TRACER_BIN ...

To use a build log as an input for parmasan daemon, use -r or --read flag.

$PARMASAN_BIN --read build-log.txt --output races.txt

When --read flag is used, parmasan will not launch any child processes.

Using breakpoints

To use breakpoints, interactive mode should be enabled via --interactive or -i options:

  • --interactive=none or -inone: (default) - interactive mode is disabled
  • --interactive=fast or -ifast: interactive mode is enabled without enforcing synchronous event handling. The build process is paused using SIGSTOP, which can induce a slight delay between breakpoint hit and actual process suspension.
  • --interactive[=sync] or -i[sync]: interactive mode is enabled, event handling is synchronous. The build process will be stopped immediately upon hitting a breakpoint at a cost of slight performance penalty.

By default, with --interactive flag specified, parmasan will stop the build and bring an interactive console for each race listed in parmasan-dump.txt.

Only races outside of /dev/ directory are reported to ignore false positives on devices such as /dev/tty and /dev/null. This can be overridden by --break and --watch options.

--break and --watch options

--break (or -b) option configures breakpoints, while --watch (-w) changes events that will be logged in the parmasan-dump.txt.

The syntax for these options is identical:

--[break|watch]='<events>:<glob>'

<events> is a set of one-char events that should trigger the breakpoint:

  • r and w stands for read and write. Both of these are triggered on read-write access.
  • a is triggered only for read-write access.
  • u corresponds to unlink.
  • R is triggered when race is detected on particular file.

Note: If the glob starts with /, it will trigger on any path matching the pattern. Otherwise, your current working directory is used as a base path for the glob.

Note: Be sure to wrap your filter in single quotes (') to avoid shell globbing.

Examples

  • --break='rwauR:/*.txt': pause the build on any event on any file ending with .txt.
  • --watch='w:build/librace.a': Log all write operations to build/librace.a under your current working directory.

Hint: Multiple --break and --watch options can be used in the same parmasan invocation along with --watch-not (-W) and --break-not (-B) options to fine-tune the triggering set of events. The filters are applied in the same order as they appear in the argument list. They can also be configured for each type of event separately.

Example:

$PARMASAN_BIN ... \
	--break='rw:*/source1.*' \
	--break='rw:*/source2.*' \
	--break-not='rw:*.cpp'

The above example will trigger on read and write events on src/source1.o, src/source2.o, src/source1.h, src/source2.h, but not on src/source1.cpp and src/source2.cpp.

Debug console commands

The parmasan debug console has the following commands:

  • help - Print the help message
  • quit - Terminate the interrupted build
  • continue - Continue the interrupted build upon next breakpoint
  • pidup - Print the information about the specified process and its ancestors
  • piddown - Print information about the specified process and its descendants
  • pid - Print full information of the specific process
  • status - Print the stop reason
  • break - Break on event(s)
  • break-not - Do not break on event(s)
  • watch - Log event(s)
  • watch-not - Do not log event(s)
  • targets - Inspect makefile targets

If command requires a process as an argument, it can be specified in several different ways:

  • -p <pid> - Refers to the alive process with specified pid.
  • -p <pid>.<epoch> - If several processes happened to share the same pid along the build, they are going to have different pid epoch. It can be specified after a dot. This notation is widely used in the parmasan interface.
  • -l and -r - Refers to the process that performed the left or right access (in a context of detected race condition).
  • -a refers to the root process (the tracer process).

Note: A dead process cannot be referred with -p <pid>. It only works for alive processes. Use -p <pid>.<epoch> or context-specific flags.

The -m option can be used for pidup and piddown commands to only list make processes.

The -f <GLOB> option can be used for targets command to filter targets by their names.

break[-not] and watch[-not] commands take a breakpoint as an argument. They have the same syntax as the corresponding command line arguments.

Examples

  • piddown -a -d 5: Print the process tree from the root process with depth of 5.
  • break 'rwu:/*/log.txt': Break on the next read, write, or unlink operation on any file named log.txt.
  • pidup -l: Print the parent list for the process that performed the left access in a context of detected race condition.
  • targets -n 20 -f *.h -p 5583.0: Print first 20 target names ending with .h of the first make process with pid 5583.

Hint: The command can be specified by its prefix, as long as it's unambiguous. For example, q can be typed for quit, c for continue, etc.