Runtime Universe type inference
Werner Dietl, Péter Müller · 2007
The Universe type system is an ownership type system for objectoriented languages that enforces the owner-as-modifier discipline. One strength of the Universe type system is its low annotation overhead. Still, annotating existing software is a considerable effort. In this paper, we describe how we can analyze the execution of programs and infer ownership modifiers from the execution. These modifiers help to understand the organization of a system and can also be re-inserted into the original source code. This allows a programmer to enforce the maintenance of a specific ownership structure. We implemented runtime Universe type inference as a C program that traces the JVM execution, a Java application that infers the Universe annotations, and a set of Eclipse plug-ins that integrates the interaction with the other tools. 1.