Cross-Language Code Analysis and Refactoring

Abstract

Software composed of artifacts written in multiple (programming) languages is pervasive in today's enterprise, desktop, and mobile applications. Since they form one system, artifacts from different languages reference one another, thus creating what we call semantic cross-language links. By their very nature, such links are out of scope of the individual programming language, they are ignored by most language-specific tools and are often only established -- and checked for errors -- at runtime. This is unfortunate since it requires additional testing, leads to brittle code, and lessens maintainability. In this paper, we advocate a generic approach to understanding, analyzing and refactoring cross-language code by explicitly specifying and exploiting semantic links with the aim of giving developers the same amount of control over and confidence in multi-language programs they have for single-language code today.