[Soot-list] Performance problem (and fix?)

[Michael Pradel]

Hi,

I found a performance problem and a maybe-fix for it, which speeds up my 
analysis by 5x. The problem is that the active hierarchy is repeatedly 
computed when calling Scene.getActiveHierarchy(). The Scene caches the 
hierarchy to avoid this redundant computation, but unfortunately Body 
contains the following statement (line 701):

	// FIXME: Work around for bug in soot
	Scene.v().releaseActiveHierarchy();

I.e., the cached hierarchy is deleted for each Body that is validated 
(I'm using the -validate option). Is this really necessary? The 
hierarchy shouldn't change while validating method bodies. As far as I 
can tell from running my own analyses, removing the statement doesn't 
change the behavior (except for avoiding the redundant computation).

Does anyone remember the reason for the FIXME (it's from October 2004)? 
Can it be removed safely? Getting a 5x speedup with such a simple change 
would be great.

Thanks,
Michael