Practical Application of Facebook Infer on Systems Code

Czech title

Praktická aplikace Facebook Infer na systémový kód

Language

English

Abstract

Static analysis is nowadays often used in the development process to find defects in the produced software. Although static analysis tools can effectively find bugs in software with millions of lines of code, they have also some disadvantages. The main disadvantages are the difficulty to deploy the chosen tool on the given project, high numbers of false reports, and the time and space requirements. This thesis focuses on mitigating these negative features of the Facebook Infer tool mainly for the context of using it to analyse Linux utilities shipped as SRPM packages. To simplify its deployment, an Infer plugin has been created for the csmock tool, which allows static analysers to run automatically on packages for CentOS or Fedora. To reduce the number of false reports, a filter has been created, which filters Infer's output according to several proposed heuristics based on experience obtained by analysing the reports produced by Infer. The filter has been also included into the csmock plugin and tested on a number of packages. On the analysed packages, the filter was able to remove 60 % of false reports with a loss of 2.5 % of real defects. The time required to run the analysis can be reduced by using incremental analysis. Shortcomings of the incremental analysis provided implicitly by Infer were experimentally found, so this thesis also describes the creation of a wrapper for Infer, which replaces the incremental analysis in Infer.

Keywords

static analysis, Facebook Infer, csmock, incremental analysis, automated analysis, SRPM package, integration of static analysers, false positive filtering, software analysis

Department

Department of Intelligent Systems FIT BUT

Degree Programme

Information Technology

Files

Status

defended, grade A

Date

15 June 2021

Reviewer

Malík Viktor, Ing.

Committee

Vojnar Tomáš, prof. Ing., Ph.D. (DITS FIT BUT), předseda
Kořenek Jan, doc. Ing., Ph.D. (DCSY FIT BUT), člen
Peringer Petr, Dr. Ing. (DITS FIT BUT), člen
Ryšavý Ondřej, doc. Ing., Ph.D. (DIFS FIT BUT), člen

Citation

BERÁNEK, Tomáš. Practical Application of Facebook Infer on Systems Code. Brno, 2021. Bachelor's Thesis. Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology. 2021-06-15. Supervised by Vojnar Tomáš. Available from: https://www.fit.vut.cz/study/thesis/24187/

BibTeX

@bachelorsthesis{FITBT24187,
    author = "Tom\'{a}\v{s} Ber\'{a}nek",
    type = "Bachelor's thesis",
    title = "Practical Application of Facebook Infer on Systems Code",
    school = "Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology",
    year = 2021,
    location = "Brno, CZ",
    language = "english",
    url = "https://www.fit.vut.cz/study/thesis/24187/"
}