Incremental Analysis of Side Effects for C Software Systems

Abstract

Incremental static analysis seeks to efficiently update semantic information about an evolving software system, without recomputing “from scratch.” Interprocedural modification side effect analysis (MOD) calculates the set of variables possibly modified by execution of a procedure or a statement. We introduce a partial incrementalization of MOD for C systems using the hybrid method and present results of a study of 27 C programs, that predicts that our incremental MOD analysis will be substantially cheaper than exhaustive analysis for many program changes.