CADOS

Configurability Aware Development of Operating Systems

(Third Party Funds Single)

Project leader: Daniel Lohmann
Project members: Christian Dietrich
Start date: 1. May 2014
Acronym: CADOS
Funding source: DFG-Einzelförderung / Sachbeihilfe (EIN-SBH)

Abstract:

Todays operating systems (as well as other system software) offer a great deal of static configurability to tailor them with respect to a specific application or hardware platform. Linux 4.2, for instance, provides (via its Kconfig models and tools) more than fifteen thousand configurable features for this purpose. Technically, the implementation of all these features is spread over multiple levels of the software generation process, including the configuration system, build system, C preprocessor, compiler, linker, and more. This enormous variability has become unmanageable in practice; in the case of Linux it already has led to thousands of variability defects within the lifetime of Linux. With this term, we denote bugs and other quality issues related to the implementation of variable features. Variability defects manifest as configuration consistency and configuration coverage issues.

In the CADOS project, we investigate scalable methods and tools to grasp the variability on every layer within the configuration and implementation space, visualize and analyze it and, if possible, adjust it while maintaining a holistic view on variability.

Publications:

• Dietrich C., Rothberg V., Füracker L., Ziegler A., Lohmann D.:
  cHash: Detection of Redundant Compilations via AST Hashing
  2017 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC '17) (Santa Clara, CA, 12. July 2017 - 14. July 2017)
  In: USENIX Association (ed.): Proceedings of the 2017 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC '17) 2017
  URL: https://www4.cs.fau.de/Publications/2017/dietrich_17_atc.pdf
• Ziegler A., Geus J., Heinloth B., Hönig T., Lohmann D.:
  Honey, I Shrunk the ELFs: Lightweight Binary Tailoring of Shared Libraries
  In: Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems 18 (2019), p. 102:1-102:23
  ISSN: 1558-3465
  DOI: 10.1145/3358222
  URL: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3358222
• Rothberg V., Dietrich C., Ziegler A., Lohmann D.:
  Towards Scalable Configuration Testing in Variable Software
  15th International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts & Experience (Amsterdam, 31. October 2016 - 1. November 2016)
  In: Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences 2016
  DOI: 10.1145/2993236.2993252
  URL: https://www4.cs.fau.de/Publications/2016/rothberg_16_gpce.pdf
• Rothberg V., Dintzner N., Ziegler A., Lohmann D.:
  Feature Models in Linux - From Symbols to Semantic
  10th International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems (VaMoS '16) (Salvador, Brazil)
  In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems, New York, NY, USA: 2016
  DOI: 10.1145/2866614.2866624
  URL: https://www4.cs.fau.de/Publications/2016/rothberg_16_vamos.pdf
• Ziegler A., Rothberg V., Lohmann D.:
  Analyzing the Impact of Feature Changes in Linux
  10th International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems (VaMoS '16) (Salvador, Brazil, 27. January 2016 - 29. January 2016)
  In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems, New York, NY, USA: 2016
  DOI: 10.1145/2866614.2866618
  URL: https://www4.cs.fau.de/Publications/2016/ziegler_16_vamos.pdf