Path Projection for User-Centered Static Analysis Tools

Abstract

The research and industrial communities have made great strides in developing sophisticated defect detection tools based on static analysis. However, to date most of the work in this area has focused on developing novel static analysis algorithms, and neglected study of other aspects of static analysis tools, in particular user interfaces. In this work, we present a novel user interface toolkit called Path Projection that helps users visualize, navigate, and understand program paths, a common component of many static analysis tools’ error reports. We performed a controlled user study to measure the benefit of Path Projection in triaging error reports from Locksmith, a data race detection tool for C. We found that Path Projection improved participants’ time to complete this task, without affecting accuracy, and that participants felt Path Projection was useful.