Faster Alias Set Analysis Using Summaries

Alias sets are an increasingly used abstraction in situations which require flow-sensitive tracking of objects through different points in time and the ability to perform strong updates on individual objects. The interprocedural and flow-sensitive nature of these analyses often make them difficult to scale. In this paper, we use two types of method summaries (callee and caller) to improve the performance of an interprocedural flow- and context-sensitive alias set analysis. We present callee method summaries and algorithms to compute them. The computed summaries contain sufficient escape and return value information to selectively replace flow-sensitive analysis of methods without affecting analysis precision. When efficiency is a bigger concern, we also use caller method summaries which provide conservative initial assumptions for pointer and aliasing relations at the start of a method. Using caller summaries in conjunction with callee summaries enables the alias set analysis to flow-sensitively analyze only methods containing points of interest thereby reducing running time. We present results from empirically evaluating the use of these summaries for the alias set analysis. Additionally, we also discuss precision results from a realistic client analysis for verifying temporal safety properties. The results show that although caller summaries theoretically reduce precision, empirically they do not. Furthermore, on average, using callee and caller summaries reduces the running time of the alias set analysis by 27% and 96%, respectively.