Reading the comments to this answer, specifically:


  Just because you can't write a test doesn't mean it's not broken. Undefined behaviour which usually happens to work as expected (C and C++ are full of that), race conditions, potential reordering due to a weak memory model... – CodesInChaos 7 hours ago





  @CodesInChaos if it cant be reproduced then the code written to 'fix' cant be tested either. And putting untested code into live is a worse crime in my opinion – RhysW 5 hours ago


...has me wondering if there are any good general ways to consistently trigger very infrequently occurring in production problems caused by race conditions in test case.

After having been in this crazy business since about 1978, having spent almost all of that time in embedded real-time computing, working multitasking, multithreaded, multi-whatever systems, sometimes with multiple physical processors, having chased more than my fair share of race conditions, my considered opinion is that the answer to your question is quite simple.

No.

There's no good general way to trigger a race condition in testing.

Your ONLY hope is to design them completely out of your system.

When and if you find that someone else has stuffed one in, you should stake him out an anthill, and then redesign to eliminate it.  After you have designed his faux pas (pronounced f***up) out of your system, you can go release him from the ants.  (If the ants have already consumed him, leaving only bones, put up a sign saying "This is what happens to people who put race conditions into XYZ project!" and LEAVE HIM THERE.)
