Combining Static Analysis and Test Generation for {C} Program Debugging

Omar Chebaro (1) , Nikolai Kosmatov (1, 2) , Alain Giorgetti (1, 3) , Jacques Julliand (1)

1 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)
2 LSL - Laboratoire Sûreté des Logiciels
3 CASSIS - Combination of approaches to the security of infinite states systems

Software validation remains crucial in software development process. Traditionally viewed as separate domains, static and dynamic analysis have complementary strengths and weaknesses and can be both applied to program validation and verification. This paper presents our ongoing work on a tool prototype called SANTE (Static ANalysis and TEsting), implementing a combination of static analysis and structural program tetsting for detection of run-time errors in C programs. First, a static analysis tool (Frama-C) is called to generate alarms when it cannot ensure the absence of run-time errors. Second, these alarms guide a structural test generation tool (PathCrawler) trying to confirm alarms by activating bugs on some test cases. Our experiments on real-life software show that this combination can outperform the use of each technique independently.

Domaines: Génie logiciel [cs.SE]; Modélisation et simulation

Omar Chebaro, Nikolai Kosmatov, Alain Giorgetti, Jacques Julliand. Combining Static Analysis and Test Generation for {C} Program Debugging. TAP'10, 4th Int. Conf. on Tests and Proofs, 2010, Spain. pp.94--100. ⟨hal-00563308⟩