Cobra - an interactive static code analyzer

Abstract

Sadly we know that virtually all software of any significance has residual errors. Some of those errors can be traced back to requirements flaws or faulty design assumptions; others are just plain coding mistakes. Static analyzers have become quite good at spotting these types of errors, but they don’t scale very well. If, for instance, you need to check a code base of a few million lines you better be prepared to wait for the result; sometimes hours. Eyeballing a large code base to find flaws is clearly not an option, so what is missing is a static analysis capability that can be used to answer common types of queries interactively, even for large code bases. I will describe the design and use of such a tool in this talk.