deadlockDetectorGo

AdvocateGo

What is AdvocateGo

AdvocateGo is an analysis tool for concurrent Go programs. It tries to detects concurrency bugs and gives diagnostic insight.

AdvocateGo tries to detect the following situations:

• A01: "Actual Send on Closed Channel",
• A02: "Actual Receive on Closed Channel",
• A03: "Actual Close on Closed Channel",
• A04: "Actual Close on Nil Channel",
• A05: "Actual Negative Wait Group",
• A06: "Actual Unlock of Not Locked Mutex",
• A07: "Actual Non-Cyclic Blocking Bug",
• A08: "Actual Cyclic Deadlock with Mutex",
• A09: "Actual Concurrent Receive on Same Channel",
• A10: "Actual Cyclic Deadlock with Mutex and Channel
• P01: "Possible Send on Closed Channel",
• P02: "Possible Receive on Closed Channel",
• P03: "Possible Negative WaitGroup cCounter",
• P04: "Possible unlock of not locked mutex",
• P05: "Possible Cyclic Deadlock with Mutex",
• P06: "Possible Cyclic Deadlock with Mutex and Channel",
• L00: "Leak",
• L01: "Leak on unbuffered channel with possible partner",
• L02: "Leak on unbuffered channel without possible partner",
• L03: "Leak on buffered Channel with possible partner",
• L04: "Leak on buffered Channel without possible partner",
• L05: "Leak on nil channel",
• L06: "Leak on select with possible partner",
• L07: "Leak on select without possible partner",
• L08: "Leak on sync.Mutex",
• L09: "Leak on sync.WaitGroup",
• L10: "Leak on sync.Cond",
• L11: "Leak on channel or select on context",

Additionally it is able to record and deterministically replay executions of concurrent GO programs.

Modes

Advocate provides 4 different modes:

• record: record the execution of a program or test into a trace
• replay: given a trace file, execute a program in such a way, that it follows the trace
• analysis: record a program and analyze the recorded trace to detect potential concurrency bugs. If a potential bug is found, rewrite the trace in such a way that the bug is triggered and replay this trace to confirm that the bug is possible.
• fuzzing: Apply different fuzzing approaches to increase the reach of the analysis.

Usage

For an explanation on how to use advocate, see here.

[!IMPORTANT] advocate is implemented for go version 1.25. Make sure, that the program does not choose another version/toolchain and is compatible with go 1.25. The output package advocate is not in std or similar indicates a problem with the used version. It can help to shorten the go version number in the go.mod file of the analyzed program from go 1.25.x to go 1.25.

Documentation

A detailed description of how advocate works can be found in the doc folder.