Effective static deadlock detection

Abstract

We present an effective static deadlock detection algorithm for Java. Our algorithm uses a novel combination of static analyses each of which approximates a different necessary condition for a deadlock. We have implemented the algorithm and report upon our experience applying it to a suite of multi-threaded Java programs. While neither sound nor complete, our approach is effective in practice, finding all known deadlocks as well as discovering previously unknown ones in our benchmarks with few false alarms.