Aspectual source code analysis with GASR

• We argue for a general-purpose source code analysis tool that is aware of aspects.• We present the logic program querying tool GASR, the first such tool..• We discuss its implementation along with its library of logical predicates.• We show how it can automatically verify previously published aspectual assumptions. AbstractAspect-oriented programming languages extend existing languages with new features for supporting modularization of crosscutting concerns. These features however make existing source code analysis tools unable to reason over this code. Consequently, all code analysis efforts of aspect-oriented code that we are aware of have either built limited analysis tools or were performed manually. Given the significant complexity of building them or manual analysis, a lot of duplication of effort could have been avoided by using a general-purpose tool.To address this, in this paper we present Gasr: a source code analysis tool that reasons over AspectJ source code, which may contain metadata in the form of annotations. Gasr provides multiple kinds of analyses that are general enough such that they are reusable, tailorable and can reason over annotations. We demonstrate the use of Gasr in two ways: we first automate the recognition of previously identified aspectual source code assumptions. Second, we turn implicit assumptions into explicit assumptions through annotations and automate their verification. In both uses Gasr performs detection and verification of aspect assumptions on two well-known case studies that were manually investigated in earlier work. Gasr finds already known aspect assumptions and adds instances that had been previously overlooked.

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“…Gasr was originally presented in previous work [1]. This journal paper extends the conference publication in multiple ways.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 92%

AspectJ code analysis and verification with GASR

Fabry

Roover

Noguera

et al. 2016

Journal of Systems and Software

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“…For instance, binary predicate ast|expression-type|primitive/2 is used on line 7 to further restrict ?subject to an int-valued expression. 2 The EKEKO library is accompanied by an Eclipse plugin that maintains each of these relations by continuously listening for developer changes. As a result, the information about the program under transformation is always up-to-date.…”

Section: A Identifying Transformation Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this end, it provides a comprehensive collection of both declarative predicates and functions that abstract over the low-level APIs of the Eclipse platform. Recent applications of EKEKO include detecting suspicious aspect-oriented code [2] and detecting fine-grained evolutions of versioned code [3]. In this section, we demonstrate how EKEKO also lends itself to providing the foundation for a program transformation tool.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Ekeko/X Program Transformation Tool

Roover

Inoue

2014

2014 IEEE 14th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation

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Abstract-Developers often need to perform repetitive changes to source code. For instance, to repair several instances of a bug or to update all clients of a library to a newer version. Manually performing such changes is laborious and error-prone. Program transformation tools enable automating changes, but specifying changes as a program transformation requires significant expertise. Code templates are often touted as a remedy, yet have never been endorsed wholeheartedly. Their use is mostly limited to expressing the syntactic characteristics of the intended change subjects. Less familiar means have to be resorted to for expressing their structural, control flow, and data flow characteristics. In this tool paper, we introduce a decidedly template-driven program transformation tool called EKEKO/X. Its specifications feature templates for specifying all of the aforementioned characteristics of its subjects. To this end, developers can associate different directives with individual components of a template. Each matching directive imposes particular constraints on the matches for the component it is associated with. Rewriting directives, on the other hand, determine how each match should be changed. We develop EKEKO/X from the ground up, starting from its applicative logic meta-programming foundation. We highlight the key choices in this implementation and demonstrate its use through two example program transformations.

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