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Automatic generation of library bindings using static analysis

Authors:

Tristan Ravitch,

Ben LiblitAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 44, Issue 6

Pages 352 - 362

https://doi.org/10.1145/1543135.1542516

Published: 15 June 2009 Publication History

Abstract

High-level languages are growing in popularity. However, decades of C software development have produced large libraries of fast, time-tested, meritorious code that are impractical to recreate from scratch. Cross-language bindings can expose low-level C code to high-level languages. Unfortunately, writing bindings by hand is tedious and error-prone, while mainstream binding generators require extensive manual annotation or fail to offer the language features that users of modern languages have come to expect.

We present an improved binding-generation strategy based on static analysis of unannotated library source code. We characterize three high-level idioms that are not uniquely expressible in C's low-level type system: array parameters, resource managers, and multiple return values. We describe a suite of interprocedural analyses that recover this high-level information, and we show how the results can be used in a binding generator for the Python programming language. In experiments with four large C libraries, we find that our approach avoids the mistakes characteristic of hand-written bindings while offering a level of Python integration unmatched by prior automated approaches. Among the thousands of functions in the public interfaces of these libraries, roughly 40% exhibit the behaviors detected by our static analyses.

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Cited By

Martínez PWoodruff JArmengol-Estapé JBernabé GGarcía JO’Boyle MVerbrugge CLhoták OShen X(2023)Matching Linear Algebra and Tensor Code to Specialized Hardware AcceleratorsProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Compiler Construction10.1145/3578360.3580262(85-97)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3578360.3580262
Ding BZhang YChen JHu MLi Q(2023)CGORewritter: A better way to use C library in G2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00072(688-692)Online publication date: Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00072
Zhong HThummalapenta SXie T(2013)Exposing behavioral differences in cross-language API mapping relationsProceedings of the 16th international conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-642-37057-1_10(130-145)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-37057-1_10
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Index Terms

Automatic generation of library bindings using static analysis
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Software libraries and repositories
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Program analysis
    2. Program semantics

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 44, Issue 6

PLDI '09

June 2009

478 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/1543135

Issue’s Table of Contents

PLDI '09: Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation
June 2009
492 pages
ISBN:9781605583921
DOI:10.1145/1542476
General Chair:
Michael Hind
IBM Research, USA
,
Program Chair:
Amer Diwan
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 June 2009

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 44, Issue 6

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Cited By

Martínez PWoodruff JArmengol-Estapé JBernabé GGarcía JO’Boyle MVerbrugge CLhoták OShen X(2023)Matching Linear Algebra and Tensor Code to Specialized Hardware AcceleratorsProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Compiler Construction10.1145/3578360.3580262(85-97)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3578360.3580262
Ding BZhang YChen JHu MLi Q(2023)CGORewritter: A better way to use C library in G2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00072(688-692)Online publication date: Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER56733.2023.00072
Zhong HThummalapenta SXie T(2013)Exposing behavioral differences in cross-language API mapping relationsProceedings of the 16th international conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-642-37057-1_10(130-145)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-37057-1_10
Zhang HDavid CYu YWang M(2023)Ownership Guided C to Rust TranslationComputer Aided Verification10.1007/978-3-031-37709-9_22(459-482)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37709-9_22
Anderson MLiu SNagle D(2018)The h2m-AutoFortran tool for facilitating C-Fortran interoperabilityACM SIGPLAN Fortran Forum10.1145/3266145.326614737:2(8-18)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2018
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Maas ANazaré HLiblit BLo DApel SKhurshid S(2016)Array length inference for C library bindingsProceedings of the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/2970276.2970310(461-471)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2016
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Maas AAldrich JEugster P(2015)Automatic array property detection via static analysisCompanion Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity10.1145/2814189.2815367(69-70)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2015
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Hong SLee BKwak TJeon YKo BKim YKim MCohen MGrunske LWhalen M(2015)Mutation-based fault localization for real-world multilingual programsProceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE.2015.14(464-475)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
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Ravitch TLiblit B(2013)Analyzing memory ownership patterns in C librariesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2555670.246416248:11(97-108)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2013
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Ravitch TLiblit BCheng PPetrank E(2013)Analyzing memory ownership patterns in C librariesProceedings of the 2013 international symposium on memory management10.1145/2491894.2464162(97-108)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2013
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