Interactive static analysis of Ada programs

Abstract

A description is given of EDSA, a program development tool that interactively uses static analysis to help gain an understanding of existing source code. This may be for the purpose of tracking down a bug, understanding old or unfamiliar code, or determining in advance whether an intended change will have any undesirable side effects. EDSA allows users to easily follow the control flow or data flow structure of their source code. It displays code with unimportant source lines elided to that users can get a more global view of the program. It provides search management, to make it easier to examine all possibilities when browsing. It also provides a novel annotation/verification process called pebbling.<>