Re: static analysis frameworks?

On Nov 13, 7:09 am, "Paul Biggar" <paul.big...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> Rather than developing a static analysis framework for our compiler
> (phc -www.phpcompiler.org) from scratch, I'd like to plug-in, as much
> as possible, an existing static analysis framework. I've had a look
> around and have only found a few.
>
> Does anyone know any other, preferably under an open source licence?
> Also has anyone tried Saturn for analysis of non-C code? As an aside,
> why aren't there many of these?


I don't know of any other with an open source license. I think
Microsoft is pushing Phoenix, which I think is free to academics but I
don't know if you get the source and I'm pretty sure you can't modify
it. I don't know if it interfaces directly to C or C++ code.


As far as "why there aren't many", you answered the question yourself
by virtue of looking for one. You clearly decided this was a lot of
work, and you don't want to do it yourself. Being a lot of work, most
others don't want to do it either, without appropriate reward.
Academics often build demonstration frameworks to prove a point
(enabling them to write a publishable paper, which is their reward),
but these frameworks are often incomplete as there is no need to use
them on real code in real-world contexts, so they don't generally have
to pay most of the cost of getting these right: getting dialects
right, getting details right, finding all the problems and curing
them, making it work on scale, etc. This is pretty hard to justify
doing for free in one's spare time.


We offer a static anlaysis framework (parsers for many languages,
including PHP4 and PHP5, general control and data flow analysis
machinery, points-to analysis machinery, and scale support [operates
at the million line code level] in the form of the DMS Software
Reengineering Toolkit. It isn't open source.


Ira Baxter, CTO
www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/DMS/DMSToolkit.html

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