Lifted static analysis using a binary decision diagram abstract domain

Abstract

Many software systems are today variational. They can produce a potentially large variety of related programs (variants) by selecting suitable configuration options (features) at compile time. Specialized variability-aware (lifted, family-based) static analyses allow analyzing all variants of the family, simultaneously, in a single run without generating any of the variants explicitly. In effect, they produce precise analysis results for all individual variants. The elements of the lifted analysis domain represent tuples (i.e. disjunction of properties), which maintain one property from an existing single-program analysis domain per variant. Nevertheless, explicit property enumeration in tuples, one by one for all variants, immediately yields to combinatorial explosion given that the number of variants can grow exponentially with the number of features. Therefore, such lifted analyses may be too costly or even infeasible for families with a large number of variants.