Towards Classification of Concurrency Bugs Based on Observable Properties

In software engineering, classification is a way to find an organized structure of knowledge about objects. Classification serves to investigate the relationship between the items to be classified, and can be used to identify the current gaps in the field. In many cases users are able to order and relate objects by fitting them in a category. This paper presents initial work on a taxonomy for classification of errors (bugs) related to concurrent execution of application level software threads. By classifying concurrency bugs based on their corresponding observable properties, this research aims to examine and structure the state of the art in this field, as well as to provide practitioner support for testing and debugging of concurrent software. We also show how the proposed classification, and the different classes of bugs, relates to the state of the art in the field by providing a mapping of the classification to a number of recently published papers in the software engineering field.