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Introduction
Release Status
Soot Bug Tracking
Improvements
Download
Compilation
Documentation
Mailing List
Credits

Sable Home

Soot: a Java Optimization Framework

Latest version: 1.2.4 (Nov 22, 2002)


Need help using Soot? See the Soot tutorials.

Introduction top
Soot is a Java optimization framework. It provides three intermediate representations for analyzing and transforming Java bytecode:
  1. Baf: a streamlined representation of bytecode which is simple to manipulate.
  2. Jimple: a typed 3-address intermediate representation suitable for optimization.
  3. Grimp: an aggregated version of Jimple suitable for decompilation and code inspection.
Soot can be used as a stand alone tool to optimize or inspect class files, as well as a framework to develop optimizations or transformations on Java bytecode.

Soot is free software and is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.


Release Status top

The Soot Framework is an evolving research project. Our goal is to produce a robust, easy-to-use research framework for optimizing Java bytecode.

The latest release is version 1.2.4. The main change is the inclusion of development version of Spark: Soot Pointer Analysis Research Kit. Available documentation for Spark includes the Spark poster and the Spark options , as well as a technical report . More detailed documentation in the form of a master's thesis is being written.

Soot should now also properly handle code compiled with 1.4.x version of javac.

A few bugs were also fixed.

We plan the following releases for the near future:

  • The Dava decompiler is planned to have separate releases.

Improvements in version 1.2.4 top
Major improvements in version 1.2.4 are:
  • Inclusion of development version of Spark: Soot Pointer Analysis Research Kit.
  • Soot should now support classes compiled with 1.4.x versions of javac.
  • Bug fixes.
A complete list of changes is in the
CHANGES file.

Major improvements in version 1.2.3

Major improvements in version 1.2.3 are:
  • Improvements of memory usage reported by Michael Pan (pan@math.tau.ac.il).
  • Re-implementation of partial redundency elimination by Florian Loitsch (florian@loitsch.net).
  • Some utility classes helping SOOT produce Dot graphs.
  • An option (-A LineNumber) to preserve line number tables.
Jasmin sable-1.2 allows the length of a token more than 64K. A complete list of changes is in the CHANGES file.

Major improvements in version 1.2.2

Release 1.2.2 improves the JSR eliminator to handle nested JSR/RETs, and corrects a misused method call in the method for building call graphs. Jasmin 1.06-s10 fixes a bug in the grammar.

Major improvements in version 1.2.1

Release 1.2.1 fixes the jar bug in older versions. Now Soot can accept `rt.jar' in the --soot-class-path command-line option.

Major improvements in version 1.2.0

This is a subset of changes in version 1.2.0; a more complete listing is in the CHANGES file.

  • An annotation framework has been added to the project.
  • A new implementation of the typing system is included.
  • A clean implementation of VTA is finally included in Soot.
Improvements in version 1.0.0 top
This is a subset of the changes in version 1.0.0; a more complete listing is in the CHANGES file.
  • Fixed bug with original name recovery.
  • Added documentation (see some tutorials.
  • Added static class synchronizer.

Download and Installation top
Get Soot from our software repository at http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/software.

To install it you must unjar(untar) it, and add the classes directories soot-1.2.4/soot/classes and soot-1.2.4/jasmin/classes to your CLASSPATH. To test your installation of Soot, try:

java soot.Main

for some options on processing classfiles. They are documented in more detail in the usage document.

Note that Soot requires at least JDK 1.2 (Java 2), as it uses Java Collections.


Compilation top
Soot is already compiled in the distribution. To recompile Soot, we use make using the Makefile in the main soot directory. The second choice is to use the SootCompiler class in the main soot/src directory. Note that in either case, jasmin must be in your classpath to compile Soot. Jasmin can be recompiled by using the script ./bin/compile_all.sh in the main Jasmin directory (you may need to type sh ./bin/compile_all.sh). Release 1.2.3 uses a new version of Jasmin, sable-1.2.

NOTE: The Jimple parser is generated by SableCC. It requires lexer.dat and parser.dat files to be in the classes directory; they are provided in the src directory. Also, Soot uses peephole optimization to improve the generated bytecode. This requires that the peephole.dat file be copied to the classes directory. Both the provided Makefile and SootCompiler automatically copy these files as needed.


Documentation top
We have developed a number of documents describing Soot. Your main current sources of information are:
  • Our publication page has several conference papers describing Soot.
  • A set of tutorials describing Soot, both as a Java application optimizer and as a compiler framework.
  • The Soot API. Most of the functionality is self-explanatory. This API is included in the Soot distribution.
  • The Soot source itself. It is full of examples on how to use the API.
  • The Soot mailing list. You can browse the archive as well as posting new questions to the Soot user community.

Mailing List top
The mailing list soot-list@sable.mcgill.ca is the primary forum for questions, discussions and comments on the Soot framework.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to majordomo@sable.mcgill.ca with

subscribe soot-list
in the body.

To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to majordomo@sable.mcgill.ca with

unsubscribe soot-list
in the body.

You can also view the mailing list archive.


Credits top
The official Soot maintainers are Patrick Lam, Feng Qian, and Ondrej Lhotak. For Soot support, write to the Soot mailing list at soot-list@sable.mcgill.ca.

Click here for the complete list of contributors and acknowledgements.


Last updated on Nov 22, 2002