How should I unit test threaded code?

Question

I have thus far avoided the nightmare that is testing multi-threaded code since it just seems like too much of a minefield. I\'d like to ask how people have gone about test

Answer 1

There are a few tools around that are quite good. Here is a summary of some of the Java ones.

Some good static analysis tools include FindBugs (gives some useful hints), JLint, Java Pathfinder (JPF & JPF2), and Bogor.

MultithreadedTC is quite a good dynamic analysis tool (integrated into JUnit) where you have to set up your own test cases.

ConTest from IBM Research is interesting. It instruments your code by inserting all kinds of thread modifying behaviours (e.g. sleep & yield) to try to uncover bugs randomly.

SPIN is a really cool tool for modelling your Java (and other) components, but you need to have some useful framework. It is hard to use as is, but extremely powerful if you know how to use it. Quite a few tools use SPIN underneath the hood.

MultithreadedTC is probably the most mainstream, but some of the static analysis tools listed above are definitely worth looking at.