Instant Bug Testing Service for Linux Kernel

摘要

While there has been active development of the Linux kernel, little has been done to address kernel bugs with gradually increasing lifetimes. From our statistical analysis, the average lifetime of kernel bugs in each kernel development cycle has increased 2.87 times from the years between 2008 and 2012. This indicates the instability of Linux kernels. To reduce bug lifetime, we present a Kernel Instant bug testing Service (KIS). KIS includes an infra-structure to collect kernel code commits, analyze the kernel with existing analysis tools and synthesize bug reports. KIS uses object caching, version merging, bisecting recall, and log filter optimizations to accelerate compilation and analysis. In the Linux kernel 3.7 development cycle, KIS used a small server farm to detect newly submitted kernel code commits from 61% active kernel git trees, and emailed hundreds of precise bug reports directly to responsible kernel developers within 1 hour on average, all without changing the kernel developers normal workflow.