Experience report on building ASTM based tools for multi-language reverse engineering

M. Moser, J. Pichler, G. Fleck, M. Witlatschil, W. Kirchmayr, L. Nocke, R. Tober. Experience report on building ASTM based tools for multi-language reverse engineering. pages 683-687, DOI 10.1109/SANER.2016.33, 3, 2016.

Autoren
  • Michael Moser
  • Josef Pichler
  • Günter Fleck
  • Michael Witlatschil
  • Wilhelm Kirchmayr
  • Ludwig Nocke
  • Rudolf Tober
BuchProceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2016)
TypIn Konferenzband
VerlagIEEE
DOI10.1109/SANER.2016.33
ISBN978-1-5090-1855-0/16
Monat3
Jahr2016
Seiten683-687
Abstract

Reverse engineering tools are utilized for development, maintenance, and modernization of software systems. The reverse engineering community has developed a large number of reverse engineering tools for different programming languages that support a variety of software engineering activities. Although tools address different reverse engineering problems and different programming languages, several issues with respect to parsing, intermediate representations, code query, program analysis, etc. are similar. However, reuse between tools takes place only on a moderate scale. To facilitate reuse in building reverse engineering tools, we have used the OMG standard ASTM as intermediate representation of source code together with black box reuse of existing (free) language parsers. In this paper we report on challenges, experiences, and solutions from several industrial research projects, in which ASTM based reverse engineering tools have been developed and used for re-documentation, re-engineering, and modernization of software systems.