RandIR: Differential testing for embedded compilers

Abstract

This paper describes RandIR, a tool for differential testing of compilers using random instances of a given intermediate representation (IR). RandIR assumes no fixed target language but instead supports extensible IR-definitions through an internal IR-independent representation of operations. This makes it particularly well suited to test embedded compilers for multi-stage programming, which is our main use case. The ideas underlying our work, however, are more generally applicable. RandIR is able to automatically simplify failing instances of a test, a technique commonly referred to as shrinking. This enables testing with large random IR samples, thus increasing the odds of detecting a buggy behavior, while still being able to simplify failing instances to human-readable code.