An Extensible Framework for Variable-Precision Data-flow Analyses in MPS

Tamás Szabó, Simon Alperovich, Markus Voelter, Sebastian Erdweg

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Data-flow analyses are used as part of many software engineering tasks: they are the foundations of program under- standing, refactorings and optimized code generation. Similar to general-purpose languages (GPLs), state-of-the-art domain-specific languages (DSLs) also require sophisticated data-flow analyses. However, as a consequence of the different economies of DSL development and their typically relatively fast evolution, the effort for developing and evolving such analyses must be lowered compared to GPLs. This tension can be resolved with dedicated support for data-flow analyses in language workbenches.

In this tool paper we present MPS-DF, which is the component in the MPS language workbench that supports the definition of data-flow analyses for DSLs. Language developers can define data-flow graph builders declaratively as part of a language definition and compute analysis results efficiently based on these data-flow graphs. MPS-DF is extensible such that it does not compromise the support for language composition in MPS. Additionally, clients of MPS-DF analyses can run the analyses with variable precision thus trading off precision for performance. This allows clients to tailor an analysis to a particular use case.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationASE 2016 Proceedings of the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
EditorsD. Lo
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages870-875
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-3845-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2016
EventASE 2016: 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering - Singapore, Singapore
Duration: 3 Sept 20167 Sept 2016
Conference number: 31

Conference

ConferenceASE 2016
Country/TerritorySingapore
CitySingapore
Period3/09/167/09/16

Keywords

  • Data-flow Analysis
  • Domain-specific Language
  • Language Workbench
  • Inter-procedural Analysis

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