Code analysis: past and present
Daniela da Cruz, Pedro Rangel Henriques, Jorge Sousa Pinto · 2009
The integration of Software components within complex industrial ap- plications with severe security standards, requires strict quality assessment of each integrated component. That is, requires a guarantee that each component is compli- ant with the software developmentgood practicesand all the standards in use. If full certification is easy to obtain for proprietary modules, it is particularly hard to achieve when dealing with Open-Source Software pieces, demanding for rigorous methods and techniques to implement their certification process. In this context, code analysis plays an important role as the basis for the automatiza- tion of quality assessment of open source software projects - code analysis provides the techniques and tools to implement the necessary validation process. Although source code is still the most explored (the main support for analysis), nowadays this assessment process should be able to deal with code at different compilation levels. Due to its relevance for theopen source software certification task, this paper re- views code analysis area (stages of the analyzing process, traditional approaches, and future trends), aiming at identifying what is available, and what deserves fur- ther research.