Visualization tools for optimizing compilers
Year: 2005
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Optimizing compilers have traditionally had little support for visual tools which display the vast amount of information generated and which could aid in the development of analyses and teaching and provide extra information to general programmers. This thesis presents a set of visualization tools which integrate visualization support for Soot, an optimizing compiler framework, into Eclipse, a popular, extensible IDE. In particular, this work explores making the research compiler framework more accessible to new users and general programmers. Tools for displaying data flow analysis results in intermediate representations (IRs) and in the original source code are discussed, with consideration for the issue of the mapping of information between the low-level IRs and the source using flexible and extensible mechanisms. Also described are tools for interactive control flow graphs which can be used for research and teaching and tools for displaying large graphs, such as calf graphs, in a manageable way. Additionally, the area of communicating information generated by optimizing compilers to general programmers is explored with a small case study to determine if analyses could be useful to general programmers and how the information is displayed. This work is shown to be useful for research to find imprecision or errors in analyses, both from visualizing the intermediate results with the interactive control flow graphs and the final results at the IR and source code levels, and for students learning about compiler optimizations and writing their first data flow analyses.
DOI: 10.82308/7144
Author: Shaw, Jennifer Elizabeth.
Language: English
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W109695533