An evaluation of reverse engineering tool capabilities

Abstract

Reverse engineering tools support software engineers in the process of analysing and understanding complex software systems during maintenance, re-engineering or re-architecturing. The functionality of such tools varies from editing and browsing capabilities to the generation of textual and graphical reports. There are several commercial reverse engineering tools on the market providing different capabilities and supporting specific source code languages. We evaluated four reverse engineering tools that analyse C source code: Refine/C, Imagix 4D, SNiFF+ and Rigi. We investigated the capabilities of these tools by applying them to a real-world embedded software system as a case study. We identified benefits and shortcomings of these tools and assessed their applicability for embedded software systems, their usability and their extensibility. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.