Skip to content

[DRAFT] [starvation] model android::Mutex and recognise custom scoped guards - #2182

Draft
VladimirMakaev wants to merge 1 commit into
facebook:mainfrom
VladimirMakaev:starvation-android-mutex-guards
Draft

VladimirMakaev wants to merge 1 commit into
facebook:mainfrom
VladimirMakaev:starvation-android-mutex-guards

Conversation

@VladimirMakaev

@VladimirMakaev VladimirMakaev commented Oct 2, 2026 •

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

Starvation only knows a fixed list of scoped guards. With any other, eg android::Mutex::Autolock,
the lock taken in the guard's constructor was read as a lock of the caller, so all guards
collapsed into one lock: inversions were missed and self deadlocks reported.

#include <mutex>

struct Guard {
  explicit Guard(std::mutex& m) : m_(m) { m_.lock(); }
  ~Guard() { m_.unlock(); }
  std::mutex& m_;
};

class C {
  std::mutex mu1_, mu2_;
 public:
  void thread1() { Guard a(mu1_); Guard b(mu2_); } // false positive: self deadlock
  void thread2() { Guard b(mu2_); Guard a(mu1_); } // same; Infer missed: deadlock with thread1
};

Callee locks are now substituted for every argument and at every call depth, and dropped when the
caller cannot express them. A local object whose constructor (or by-value return, if its
destructor releases a lock) leaves one lock held becomes a guard of that lock. android::Mutex and
Autolock are modelled, tryLock and timedLock as trylocks returning zero on success; RacerD now
also reports races in classes using them.

Trade-off: callee locks and unlocks the caller cannot express are dropped, missing deadlocks
through objects returned by calls (eg Java singletons) and keeping locks released through a local
guard struct.

Test plan

New tests in c/starvation/lock_wrappers.c, cpp/starvation (android_mutex.cpp, custom_guards.cpp,
substitution.cpp), cpp/racerd/android_mutex.cpp and java/starvation/Parameters.java, with FP_/FN_
tests for the limitations. The codetoanalyze tests pass.

Starvation only knows a fixed list of scoped guards. With any other, eg android::Mutex::Autolock,
the lock taken in the guard's constructor was read as a lock of the caller, so all guards
collapsed into one lock: inversions were missed and self deadlocks reported.

```cpp
#include <mutex>

struct Guard {
  explicit Guard(std::mutex& m) : m_(m) { m_.lock(); }
  ~Guard() { m_.unlock(); }
  std::mutex& m_;
};

class C {
  std::mutex mu1_, mu2_;
 public:
  void thread1() { Guard a(mu1_); Guard b(mu2_); } // false positive: self deadlock
  void thread2() { Guard b(mu2_); Guard a(mu1_); } // same; Infer missed: deadlock with thread1
};
```

Callee locks are now substituted for every argument and at every call depth, and dropped when the
caller cannot express them. A local object whose constructor (or by-value return, if its
destructor releases a lock) leaves one lock held becomes a guard of that lock. android::Mutex and
Autolock are modelled, tryLock and timedLock as trylocks returning zero on success; RacerD now
also reports races in classes using them.

Trade-off: callee locks and unlocks the caller cannot express are dropped, missing deadlocks
through objects returned by calls (eg Java singletons) and keeping locks released through a local
guard struct.

## Test plan

New tests in c/starvation/lock_wrappers.c, cpp/starvation (android_mutex.cpp, custom_guards.cpp,
substitution.cpp), cpp/racerd/android_mutex.cpp and java/starvation/Parameters.java, with FP_/FN_
tests for the limitations. The codetoanalyze tests pass.

This branch has not been deployed

No deployments
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant