NPTL Stabilization Project

Our project is a stabilization effort on the GNU libc thread library NPTL - Native POSIX Threading Library. To achieve this, we focused our work on extending the pool of open-source tests and on providing a tool for tracing the internal mechanisms of the library.

This paper introduces our work with a short status on tests coverage of the NPTL at the beginning of the project (February 2004). It explains how we built the prioritized list of NPTL routines to be tested. It then describes our methodology for designing tests in the following areas: conformance to POSIX standard, scalability and stress. It also explains how we have simplified the use of the tests and the analysis of the results. Finally, it provides figures about our results and it shows how the NPTL has evolved during year 2004.

The paper goes on to explain how the NPTL Trace Tool can help NPTL users and hackers to understand and fix problems. It describes the features of the tool and presents our chosen architecture. Finally, it shows the current status of the project and the possible future extensions.