A Progress Bar for Static Analyzers

We present a technique for devising a progress indicator of static analyzers. Progress indicator is a useful user interface that shows how close a static analysis has progressed so far to its completion. Because static analysis’ progress depends on the semantic complexity, not on the code size, of the target software, devising an accurate progress-indicator is not obvious. Our technique first combines a semantic-based pre-analysis and a statistical method to approximate how a main analysis progresses in terms of lattice height of the abstract domain. Then, we use this information during the main analysis and estimate the analysis’ current progress. We apply the technique to three existing analyses (interval, octagon, and pointer analyses) for C and show the technique estimates the actual analysis progress for various benchmarks.