[Soot-list] Confused by SOOT tags: in source file or in .jimple file? And how to remove them?

[Eric Bodden]

Hello.

> 1.  Are those tags supposed to appear in source or in jimple code ? It is
> clear that, in my machine the tags of the built-in nullness analysis
> appeared in source code, and the tags of the built-in liveness analysis
> appeared in jimple but not in  source code.

To the best of my knowledge, tags should be shown in both Jimple and
Java code. If that's not the case then I don't know why not.

> 2.  Could you explain me the differences between some very basic terms:
> tag/attribute/annotation ?  These seem to be too evident that I cannot find
> their exact meaning in Google or the most helpful survivor´s guide. (I
> suppose, an annotation is a Java term I suppose, a tag is something attached
> to "hosts" to give a visual effect, an attribute is only a SOOT option
> "-xml-attribute", is that right)

Attributes are part of Java bytecode. Annotations are source-level
entities that javac and other compilers compile into special
attributes. Soot uses tags to represent attributes in general, which
also includes attributes originating from annotations. Hope that
helps...

> 3. I also would like to know on which pack should I inject my third-part
> liveness analysis, jtp or jap, Or whatever ?

Analyses usually go into jtp. In the jap pack you then have
transformers that use analysis information to generate tags.

Cheers,
Eric