Matters

Extended Static Checking for Java, related tools: " ESC/Java has been designed to be used by programmers who aspire to write programs that will hold up to reliable use and evolution. When a program is too large or too long-lived for one programmer actively to remember all its details, it is useful to document various design decisions as they are being made. ESC/Java's annotation language provides a stylized way to write down many such design decisions; for example, that a certain field should never be null. And as a bonus, ESC/Java mechanically checks that a program adheres to the decision decisions, so that one may detect incorrectly added or modified code early. Nevertheless, to add ESC/Java annotations to an existing program may be a daunting task. The tool Houdini, an annotation assistant for ESC/Java under development as a research project at Compaq SRC, can alleviate this annotation task. Houdini infers ESC/Java annotations for a given program and then runs ESC/Java to obtain a set of warnings."