Future-proofing the Soot Framework for Program Analysis and Transformation (FutureSoot)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Eric Bodden; Professor Dr. Rüdiger Kabst
• Subject Area: Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems ; Software Engineering and Programming Languages
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391001466

Soot is the probably worldwide most popular framework for analyzing and transforming Java and Android applications. During its lifetime of more than fifteen years, researchers have developed countless research tools directly based on Soot. The Soot framework offers those tools a common implementation platform, which greatly increases comparability between the tools, and greatly reduced the time and cost of their implementation.The main goal of this project is to set Soot on the right track to secure its maintenance also in the long term, beyond the duration of this project. The cornerstones of this proposal are thus the development of a sustainability plan, the implementation of a reliably build-and-test infrastructure, and a reengineering of Soot's core components to improve the framework's modularity. The desired effect of this work is that in the future Soot will be easier to maintain and that is will be maintained according to well-established and documented processes. Further, using workshops the project aims to unite the main stakeholder within the Soot community and to coordinate the planned maintenance efforts between them.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Participating Institution: Fraunhofer-Institut für Entwurfstechnik Mechatronik (IEM)