changes.txt

-*- org -*-

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0.22 (Q4 2012) (codegraph fine grained, cmt/class parsers)

codegraph for more languages, at very fine grained level

added OCaml (.ml and .cmt), Java (.java and .class), and improved PHP.

codequery for more languages

in addition to PHP, support for java (via .class and .java files), ocaml (via .cmt files)

introduce lang_bytecode/ (mostly wrapper around javalib/),

with graph_code support.

added support for .cmt files for ocaml 4.00 allowing better analysis

of ocaml code, including pfff code

spatch: improved unparser, more flexible, easier to add heuristics

regarding spacing issues

0.21 (Q3 2012) (codegraph, java/c parser)

introduce codegraph, a hierarchical matrix-based dependency visualizer

with support for PHP, C,

introduce lang_c/

a simplified version of lang_cpp/ just focusing on C. Also added graph_code_c.ml.

improve lang_java/, support for generics, annotations, and other recent

Java features. Also added graph_code_java.ml.

scheck

new variable checker using ast_php_simple.ml

far less false positives

0.20 (Q2 2012) (luisa)

introduce graph_code.ml, another way to represent a full program

futur backend of codegraph

sgrep:

metavariables for XHP attributes

internals

improve ast_php_simple.ml

good basis then for graph_code_php.ml, new, check_variables_php.ml, etc.

0.19 (Q1 2012) (pfff_logger)

introduce pfff_logger (in OPA), monitoring the use of pfff tools

(please rerun ./configure if you have compilation pbs)

introduce lang_opa

basic support

introduce type inference for PHP (julien)

sgrep:

case insensitive mode by default

metavariables for XHP tags

internals

heavily commented abstract interpreter and type inference

refactored lang_php/analysis/

less error messages, progress meter, split files, each PHP database has its own file, refactored abstract interpreter, etc.

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0.18 (Q4 2011) (codequery)

introduce codequery, an interactive Prolog-based code query engine,

especially useful to query inheritance information.

introduce simplified AST for PHP (julien)

introduce abstract interpreter for PHP (julien)

which leads to a more precise callgraph, type information, and opens the way for many more checks (including security checks using tainting analysis).

scheck: lots of new checks, and removed lots of false positives

while still being reasonably fast, thanks to the use of a lazy entity finder.

spatch

leverage pretty printer so can reindent correctly the code

after some transformation. Thx to julien. spatch –pretty-printer.

a “sed mode” so can do spatch -e ‘s/foo(X,Y)/foo(X)/’ *.php

lang_ml, more highlight

so can parse julien’s code which heavily use modules.

lang_cpp, better parsing

internals

removed lots of dead code now that commited to use the abstract interpreter

(and prolog) instead of a PIL+cflow+dataflow+db+…

refacrored lang_php/analysis, get rid of directories

0.17 (Q3 2011) (overlay, pm_depend)

introduce notion of code overlay

with some helper functions to check the validity of an overlay. Also added some support for overlay in codemap.

Overlays help organize and visualize a (bad) codebase from a different point of view.

introduce pm_depend

a package/module dependency visualizer exporting data for Gephi (only for ocaml code for now). Played with it on the code of pfff (in package mode) and some of its components: codemap, cpp, php, cmf (in module mode with and without extern mode).

update: superseded by codegraph

started port of codemap to ocsigen

can now display the treemap. Had to report many bugs to the ocsigen team to get this to work.

update: staled

sgrep: support for regexp when matching string constants

0.16 (Q2 2011) (c++ parser refactoring)

better C++ parser

complete refactoring of the parser. Far less heuristics techniques. Closer to what was described in the CC’09 paper.

0.15 (Q1 2011) (html/css parsers, ocsigen try)

introduce web-based source code navigator a la LXR using ocsigen

first play with ocsigen.

update: not used

introduce lang_html/ with clean ast_html.ml type

(also using code from a stripped down version of ocamlnet)

introduce lang_css/

(using code from ccss by dario teixeira)

introduce lang_web/ with combined html+js+css parser

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0.14 (Q4 2010) (layers, spatch, more language highlighters)

codemap

layer type, so can save results of global analysis and process them

later in codemap or pfff_statistics

layers! like in google earth

• architecture/aspect layer (default one)
• static dead code layer
• dead: dynamic live code layer (using xhprof data)
• test coverage layer (using phpunit and xdebug data)
• bugs layer
• security layer
• cyclomatic complexity,
• age (and activity) layer
• number of authors layer

more semantic visual feedback

can see arguments passed by refs visually (TakeArgNByRef) as well as functions containing dynamic calls (ContainDynamicCall)

visual grep

can now visualize the result of a git grep on a project

better visualization of directories

use different color for dirs and files labels, and highlight first letter of label at depth = 1

introduce spatch, a syntactical patch

a DSL to express easily refactoring on PHP.

sgrep/spatch

better support for XHP patterns with flexible matching

on attributes

experimental support for statement patterns

can now express patterns like: sgrep -e ‘foreach($A as $V) { if (strpos($T, $V) !== false) { return Z; }}’

introducing lang_nw/

so can visualize also Tex/Latex/Noweb source (which includes the documentation of pfff!)

introducing lang_lisp/

introducing lang_haskell/

introducing lang_python/

introducing lang_csharp/

introducing lang_erlang/

introducing lang_java/

lang_ml

more highlight

php analysis

finalized the PIL

update: superseded by ast_php_simple.ml

dead? dataflow analysis using PIL (thanks to iproctor)

update: supersed by abstract interpreter

global analysis

store additional attributes/properties per entities in the light code db

• does it take argument by refs.
• does it contain dynamic calls ($fn(…))

This can help the visualizer to give more semantic visual feedback.

documentation

wrote wiki pages (intro, sgrep, spatch, features, vision, roadmap, etc)

applied codemap on many open source project and generated screenshots.

internals

refactored the code in visual/ to have smaller and cleaner files

thanks to literate programming and codemap itself to show the problem and assist in the refactoring

refactored code about defs/uses in defs_uses_php.ml

and put more generic stuff in h_program-lang/

renamed pfff_visual in codemap

commons/graph.ml

a polymorphic wrapper around ocamlgraph

(to compute strongly connected components of php callgraph, in prevision of a bottom up analysis of php)

update: also useful for codegraph backend.

0.13

first public release!

0.12 (Q3 2010) (codemap, light db, tags, scheck, ocaml/js parsers)

Real start of multi-language support.

introduce source code navigator/searcher/visualizer using cairo

Show treemap and thumbnails of file content! Have also minimap, zoom, labels, alpha for overlapping labels, labels in diagonal, anamorphic content showing in bigger fonts the important stuff, magnifying glass, clickable content where a click opens the file in your editor at the right place, etc. => A kind of google maps but on code :)

Support for PHP, Javascript, ML, C++, C, thrift.

For PHP do also URL highlighting which helps understand the control flow in webapps. Also highlight local/globals/parameters variables differently. Also highlight bad smells (especially security related bad smells)

Integrate other PL artifacts:

• The builtins API reference
• PLEAC cookbooks

=> a single place to query information about the code (no need to first grep the code, then google for the function because it turns out to be a builtin).

Can easily go the definition of a function (whether it’s a builtin or not, thanks to the parsable PHP manual and HPHP idl files).

Can easily go to the example of use of a function (whether it’s a builtin or not, thanks to PLEAC for the builtin functions).

Far more flexible and powerful than the previous treemap visualizer which was using Graphics. Now also render file content!

new tool, stags, a TAG generator using ASTs not fragle regexp

support for PHP ocaml

introduce parsing_ml/

Allow to use and experiment the treemap code visualizer on the pfff source itself; to see if such features are useful.

introduce parsing_cpp/

introduce analyze_js/, analyze_cpp/, analyze_ml/

very basic support. Just highlighting

introduce database_code.ml, a generic code-information database

using JSON as support. Will help make pfff less php-specific.

sgrep

support linear patterns (e.g. sgrep -e ‘X & X’) and a -pvar option to print matched metavarables instead of matched code

internals

reorganized the treemap and h_program-lang/ to be less facebook and pfff specific. Have a commons/file_type.ml for instance.

0.11

introduce checker, scheck

warn about “unused variable” and “use of undefined variable”.

use fast global analysis (bonus: it’s flib-aware and desugar the require_module_xxx and other flib conventions).

introduce php_etags

a more precise TAGS file generator (bonus: it’s xhp-aware).

introduce javascript support, parsing_js/

parsing/unparsing/dumping. preliminary refactoring support.

introduce builtin XHP support

analysis

dead? introduce PIL, PHP Intermediate Language

a more conveninent AST to work on for doing complex analysis such as dataflow, type-inference, tainted analysis, etc.

include/require analysis as well as flib-unsugaring. Make it possible

to grab all the files needed to check one file, in a way similar to what gcc does with cpp. Provide a DFS and BFS algo.

0.10 (Q2 2010) (test coverage)

finish test coverage analysis using xdebug.ml and phpunit.ml

rank, filter, parallelize (using MPI), cronize.

helpers to write some PHP refactorings

fix parsing (lexer) and unparsing bugs

introduce the transfo field, mimicing part of coccinelle.

improve support for XHP and refactoring, merging tokens heuristic.

analysis

static method calls analysis (with self/parent special cases handling)

users_of_class, users_of_define, extenders/implementers of class

parser

fix bugs in lexer, now can parse <?= code

internal

split analyze_php/ in multiple dirs

and moved code from facebook/ to analyze_php/

started to use OUnit.ml !

unit tests for parsing, analysis, deadcode, callgraph, xdebug

first work on web gui

extract and modularize php highlighting logic from gtk gui.

started integrate treemap and web gui.

first work on thrift interface to pfff services

used by web ui of acrichton

misc

static arrays lint checks

dead? proto of undeterministic PHP bugs finder using diff and xdebug

0.9

phpunit result analysis and parsing

analysis

control flow graph analysis: useful for cyclomatic complexity, and potentially useful or far more things (sgrep, dataflow, etc)

dead? start of dataflow analysis

start of coverage analysis (static and dynamic)

start of include_require static analysis (and flib file dependencies too)

dead? start of type unioning

dead? introduce compile_php/

but for now very rudimentary update: not used for now

internals

reorganized json/sexp output, factorize code and use more ocaml.ml

0.8 (Q1 2010) (sgrep, treemap, xdebug dynamic analysis)

xdebug trace parsing, can now do dynamic analysis!

Done for type “inference/extraction” at the beginnning and useful for coverage too!

dead: GUI, trivial type inference feedback based on xdebug info

update: not really used for now, superseded by julien static type inference

sgrep: introducing $V special metavar

dead? introducing parsing_sql/

could be useful at some point for better type checking or type inference update: not used for now

0.7

dead: introducing ppp, php pre processor, and implement closure

by source-to-source transformation.

now I can code in PHP :)

improved pretty printer, and helpers for AST transformation

with map_php.ml. Used by ppp and closure implemetation.

sgrep:

• a -emacs flag
• improved -xhp and made it the default operating mode

deadcode:

• do fixpoint analysis per file

0.6

introducing sgrep_php

a code matcher working at the AST level

introducing treemap viewer using Graphics.mli

update: superseded by cairo-based viewer (but reused most of the algorithms)

treemap algorithms library and basic literate programming manual

dead? introducing code_rank

ref from sebastien bergmann

0.5

dead: XHP poor’s man support.

Just have A new -pp option to give opportunity to call a preprocessor (eg ‘xhpize -d’).

ffi/meta

a new -json option and json support

also supported in sgrep.

0.4

doc

programmer manual for parsing_php/ internals manual for parsing_php/

!!use literate programming method (via noweb/syncweb)!! (hence the special marks in the source)

analysis

callgraph for methods (using weak heuristic), with optimisations to scale (partially because use weak heuristic)

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0.3 (Q4 2009) (php parser, berkeley db, deadcode)

analysis

deadcode analysis v2, v3, v4

infrastructure

IRC support (adapting ocamlirc/) update: not used anymore

complement git.ml

0.2

analysis

deadcode analysis v1

0.1

dead: introducing PHP gui (with ocamlgtk/)

update: superseded by codemap, a fancy gui using cairo and gtk

beta

global analysis first draft, PHP database (with ocamlbdb/)

alpha (Nov 2009)

PHP parser first draft !

reused Zend flex/bison code.

visitor (using ocamltarzan)

AST dumper (also using ocamltarzan and lib-sexp)