INSTEP: A Static Instrumentation Framework for Preserving Extra-functional Properties

Tracing is a well-established method for debugging programs. Current approaches aim only at preserving functional correctness during the instrumentation. Preservation of functional correctness is a necessary feature of all instrumentation tools. However, few existing instrumentation tools preserve extra-functional properties of a program. Specific classes of software are unable to leverage software instrumentation; e.g., timing for real-time systems, memory consumption for embedded software, and tracing bandwidth for on-board software.

We present the first instrumentation framework, INSTEP, that preserves logical correctness and a rich set of extra-functional properties. INSTEP derives instrumentation alternatives based on the developer’s instrumentation intent (II), abstracts the program and prunes the search space, and then instruments the program based on constraints and cost models of competing properties. We demonstrate and experiment with a fully automated framework of INSTEP with different IIs and extra-functional properties. We also experiment with a large automotive case study to show the scalability of INSTEP.