DELFIN+: An efficient deadlock detection tool for CCS processes

Model checking is a formal technique for proving the correctness of a system with respect to a desired behavior. However, deadlock detection via model checking is particularly difficult for the following two problems: (i) the state explosion problem, due to the exponential increase in the size of a finite state model as the number of system components grows; and (ii) the output interpretation problem, as often counter-examples are so long that they are hard to understand. The aim of this paper is to solve both problems by using heuristic-based search strategies. We have realized DELFIN+ (DEadLock FINder) a tool supporting efficient deadlock detection in CCS processes. We have used this tool to verify a sample of CCS processes, in order to evaluate the method on them.