A software product line for static analyses: the OPAL framework

Abstract

Implementations of static analyses are usually tailored toward a single goal to be efficient, hampering reusability and adaptability of the components of an analysis. To solve these issues, we propose to implement static analyses as highly-configurable software product lines (SPLs). Furthermore, we also discuss an implementation of an SPL for static analyses -- called OPAL -- that uses advanced language features offered by the Scala programming language to get an easily adaptable and (type-)safe software product line. OPAL is a general purpose library for static analysis of Java Bytecode that is already successfully used. We present OPAL and show how a design based on software produce line engineering benefits the implementation of static analyses with the framework.