Characterizing and taming non-deterministic bugs in Javascript applications

Abstract

JavaScript has become one of the most popular programming languages for both client-side and server-side applications. In JavaScript applications, events may be generated, triggered and consumed non-deterministically. Thus, JavaScript applications may suffer from non-deterministic bugs, when events are triggered and consumed in an unexpected order. In this proposal, we aim to characterize and combat non-deterministic bugs in JavaScript applications. Specifically, we first perform a comprehensive study about real-world non-deterministic bugs in server-side JavaScript applications. In order to facilitate bug diagnosis, we further propose approaches to isolate the necessary events that are responsible for the occurrence of a failure. We also plan to design new techniques in detecting non-deterministic bugs in JavaScript applications.