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2009
Springer

Dead or Alive: finding zombie features in the Linux kernel

13 years 10 months ago
Dead or Alive: finding zombie features in the Linux kernel
Variability management in operating systems is an errorprone and tedious task. This is especially true for the Linux operating system, which provides a specialized tool called Kconfig for users to customize kernels from an impressive amount of selectable features. However, the lack of a dedicated tool for kernel developers leads to inconsistencies between the implementation and the variant model described by Kconfig. This results in real bugs like features that cannot be either enabled or disabled at all; the so called zombie features. For both in the implementation and the variant model, these inconsistencies can be categorized in referential and semantic problems. We therefore propose a tool approach to check the variability described by conditional compilation in the implementation with the variant model for both kinds of consistency. Our analysis of the variation points show that our approach is feasible for the amount of variability found in the Linux kernel.
Reinhard Tartler, Julio Sincero, Wolfgang Schr&oum
Added 27 May 2010
Updated 27 May 2010
Type Conference
Year 2009
Where MODELS
Authors Reinhard Tartler, Julio Sincero, Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat, Daniel Lohmann
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