An incremental approach to reachability analysis of distributed programs

Abstract

We present an incremental approach to reachability analysis of distributed programs with synchronous communication and mailbox naming. Each process in a distributed program can be modeled as a communicating finite state machine (CFSM). A set of CFSMs is organized into a hierarchy. We present an algorithm that, for a given hierarchy of a set M of CFSMs, incrementally composes and reduces subsets of CFSMs in M. This incremental reachability analysis guarantees the detection of global deadlocks. We provide an algorithm for selecting a hierarchy for a set of CFSMs and show an incremental analysis of the gas station problem.<>