Ready, set, Go! Data-race detection and the Go language

TL;DR

This paper introduces a data-race detection method for the Go language, focusing on channel communication as the only synchronization primitive and establishing a semantics based on the happens-before relation.

Contribution

It presents a novel data-race detector tailored for Go, utilizing vector clocks linked to channel-based synchronization and formal semantics.

Findings

Effective detection of data races in Go programs

Semantics based on happens-before relation enhances accuracy

Applicable to concurrent programs using channels

Abstract

Data races are often discussed in the context of lock acquisition and release, with race-detection algorithms routinely relying on vector clocks as a means of capturing the relative ordering of events from different threads. In this paper, we present a data-race detector for a language with channel communication as its sole synchronization primitive, and provide a semantics directly tied to the happens-before relation, thus forging the notion of vector clocks.