NonDex

NonDex is a tool for detecting and debugging wrong assumptions on under-determined Java APIs. An example of such an assumption is when code assumes the order of iteration through the entries in a java.util.HashMap is deterministic , while the specification for java.util.HashMap states that its iteration order is not guaranteed to be in any particular order. Such assumptions can hurt portability for an application when they are moved to other environments with a different Java runtime. NonDex explores different behaviors of under-determined APIs and reports test failures under different explored behaviors; NonDex only explores behaviors that are allowed by the specification, so tests that fail or flake under NonDex instrumentation likely indicate false assumptions on a deterministic implementation of an under-determined Java API. NonDex helps expose such "implementation-dependent" flaky tests to the developers early, so they can fix the assumptions before they become actual bugs in the future and/or even propagate to other projects.

Supported APIs:

The list of supported APIs can be found here

Prerequisites:

- Java 8 ~ 17 (Oracle JDK, OpenJDK).
- Maven 3.6+ and Surefire present in the POM.(for the NonDex Maven plugin).
- Gradle 5.0+ (for the NonDex Gradle plugin).

Build (Maven):

mvn install

Build (Gradle):

cd nondex-gradle-plugin
./gradlew build

Use (Maven - Command-line):

To find if you have flaky tests under NonDex shuffling, run (use the -Dtest=... filter for individual tests):

mvn edu.illinois:nondex-maven-plugin:2.1.7:nondex

To debug, run:

mvn edu.illinois:nondex-maven-plugin:2.1.7:debug

The NonDex Maven plugin also offers additional options; to see them all, run:

mvn edu.illinois:nondex-maven-plugin:2.1.7:help

Use (Maven - Add Plugin):

Add the NonDex plugin to the plugins section under the build section in your pom.xml:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>edu.illinois</groupId>
        <artifactId>nondex-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.7</version>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

To find if you have flaky tests, run:

mvn nondex:nondex

To debug, run:

mvn nondex:debug

The NonDex Maven plugin also offers additional options; to see them all, run:

mvn nondex:help

Use (Gradle):

To use NonDex in Gradle (Groovy), add the following content into your build.gradle:

plugins {
  id 'edu.illinois.nondexGradle' version '2.1.7'
}

Apply it to subjects (if any, optional):

subprojects {
  apply plugin: 'edu.illinois.nondex'
}

To use NonDex in Gradle (Kotlin), add the following content into your build.gradle.kts:

plugins {
  id("edu.illinois.nondexGradle") version "2.1.7"
}

Apply it to subjects (if any, optional):

subprojects {
  apply(plugin = "edu.illinois.nondex")
}

To find if you have flaky tests, run (use the --tests filter for individual tests):

./gradlew nondexTest

To debug, run:

./gradlew nondexDebug

To get the help information of NonDex Gradle plugin, run:

./gradlew nondexHelp

Use (Command-line):

After installing, if your application uses the same Java version as you use to build NonDex, run:

root=<path to NonDex root>
instrumentedjar=${root}/nondex-instrumentation/resources/out.jar
# Use the instrumented jar to run your application
commonjar=${root}/nondex-common/target/nondex-common-2.1.7.jar
java -Xbootclasspath/p:${instrumentedjar}:${commonjar} <application>

Optionally, in case your application needs a different Java version than the one you use to build NonDex, after installing, run:

root=<path to NonDex root>
instrumentingjar=${root}/nondex-instrumentation/target/nondex-instrumentation-2.1.7.jar
instrumentedjar=${root}/<unique name of the output jar, such as out.jar>
java -jar ${instrumentingjar} <path to rt.jar> ${instrumentedjar}
# Use the instrumented jar to run your application
commonjar=${root}/nondex-common/target/nondex-common-2.1.7.jar
java -Xbootclasspath/p:${instrumentedjar}:${commonjar} <application>

Output:

If there are flaky tests (passes in the run without NonDex shuffling but fails in one of the NonDex-shuffled runs), the output will report them under the section marked "NonDex SUMMARY:".

The flaky tests are also logged in files called "failure" in the .nondex/ directory. Each execution is identified by an execution ID (also reported in the Maven output) and an execution that has a "failure" file in the .nondex/ directory with the same name as the execution ID.

Output (Debug):

After running the debug task, the Maven output reports for each flaky test both the command-line arguments to pass in to reproduce the failure and the path to the file containing the debug results for the flaky test. These files are named "debug", and they contain the name of the debugged test and the stack trace for the single invocation point that when run through NonDex leads to the test failing. If the test cannot be debugged to this single point, the debugger will report that the cause cannot be reproduced and may be flaky due to other reasons.