433121 - Treehydra: need forward analysis framework

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Developer Infrastructure :: Source Code Analysis, defect)

Description

[David Mandelin [:dmandelin]]

The Treehydra libs directory has a backward abstract interpretation framework. We need a forward analysis as well. In particular, dead code detection and constant branch detection are forward analyses. 

The obvious thing to do is copy the backward analysis code and switch things around as needed. But the framework is complex enough that it would be nice to share changes and bugfixes across the two. We could do this by instead adding traversal order overrides to the framework. 

Recommendations?

Comment 1

[David Mandelin [:dmandelin]]

Additional note. So far we've been using the ESP lib for forward analyses, and that seems to work well. In particular, the ESP lib helps handle the destructor blocks and other funny GCC control flow things. So maybe we don't need another forward analysis system.

Comment 2

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Dehydra and treehydra are no longer maintained by Mozilla.