TRACERJD: Generic trace-based dynamic dependence analysis with fine-grained logging

Abstract

We present the design and implementation of TRACERJD, a toolkit devoted to dynamic dependence analysis via fine-grained whole-program dependence tracing. TRACERJD features a generic framework for efficient offline analysis of dynamic dependencies, including those due to exception-driven control flows. Underlying the framework is a hierarchical trace indexing scheme by which TRACERJD maintains the relationships among execution events at multiple levels of granularity while capturing those events at runtime. Built on this framework, several application tools are provided as well, including a dynamic slicer and a performance profiler. These example applications also demonstrate the flexibility and ease with which a variety of client analyses can be built based on the framework. We tested our toolkit on four Java subjects, for which the results suggest promising efficiency of TRACERJD for its practical use in various dependence-based tasks.