[Soot-list] Fwd: [Soot] Your organization application has been rejected.

[Richard Xiao]

Hi, Eric and Elena:

After my recent experience on soot, I think adding more functions to soot
is not the first priority. I feel that it's time to check and refactor the
current code base:

1. More and more people report problems for components that are untouched
for a long time, such as the recent reported InfoFlows. For those
components working improperly, we should fix them or move it out of soot to
be an optional package, just like and paddle and heros does.

2. Most analysis and optimization algorithms written for jimple, shimple is
lacking of support for a long time and it is unknown the existing analysis
and optimization algorithms can work correctly on shimple. To attract more
users doing experiments with soot, I think it is useful to refactor the
code to add an abstract layer to model different program representations.
Then, we let the analysis and optimization algorithms work on the abstract
layer to serve all supported IRs.

3. Improve the performance of soot. Analyzing software with higher JDK (1.5
or above) consumes significant time and memory, especially for the
points-to packages spark and paddle (even we use BDD). In my memory, there
are many inefficient use of data structures. For example, the bit-vector
for points-to information is not sparse bit-vector. Although it is expanded
on demand, we still waste lots of space for empty bits. Moreover, it also
wastes lot of memory if we use it for storing side-effect information.

4. New query interfaces should be added to give users more ways to access
information. The typical example is the points-to information. Using the
"forAll" function to visit the points-to vector is not efficient because
first, we have to create a visitor object and pass it to "forAll". Second,
sometimes we only search for particular object, the "forAll" function
forces us to visit all objects and it is not easy to terminate the visit
process earlier. Therefore, it is more convenient to provide a "iterator"
way to access the points-to vector. Another problem is that the "is alias"
query is not defined in the standard query interface. Therefore, users have
to write different code for experimenting with different points-to
packages, which increases the burden for users to study the internal design
of these packages.

These are only my personal opinions for the GSOC project. Hopefully we can
have a discussion on these issues.


Best Regards,
Xiao


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 7:13 AM, Elena Sherman
<elenasherman at boisestate.edu>wrote:

> Yeah, but it is very competitive. Can try next year again, hopefully, with
> more preparation and feedback.
> I will try to participate in the IRC if I figure out how to use it and
> correctly translate 16:00 UTC to my time zone.
>
> Elena
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 12:48 AM, Eric Bodden <
> eric.bodden at sit.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I am afraid that GSOC rejected our application for this year. Too bad.
>> Is anyone interested in participating in the IRC chat mentioned below?
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From:  <no-reply at google-melange.appspotmail.com>
>> Date: 8 April 2013 20:42
>> Subject: [Soot] Your organization application has been rejected.
>> To: eric.bodden at gmail.com
>>
>>
>> Thank you for submitting "Soot" organization application to Google
>> Summer of Code 2013. Unfortunately, we were unable to accept your
>> organization's application at this time. Every year we receive many
>> more applications than we are able to accommodate, and we would
>> encourage you to reapply for future instances of the program.
>>
>> If you would like some general feedback on why your organization was
>> not accepted, please consider attending the IRC meeting in #gsoc on
>> Freenode on Friday, April 19, 2013 at 16:00 UTC.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Google Open Source Programs
>>
>>
>> --
>> Eric Bodden, Ph.D., http://sse.ec-spride.de/ http://bodden.de/
>> Head of Secure Software Engineering Group at EC SPRIDE
>> Tel: +49 6151 16-75422    Fax: +49 6151 16-72051
>> Room 3.2.14, Mornewegstr. 30, 64293 Darmstadt
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>
>
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-- 
Richard Xiao Xiao
PhD Student @ CSE @ Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
www.cse.ust.hk/~richardxx
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