Analysis and Code Model Extraction for C/C++ Source Code

In the area of re-engineering or re-purposing of existing software, model driven methodologies are hard to adopt because of lack of the central asset: models for the existing source code. Large companies and organizations that maintain a large code basis over long periods of time have recognized this issue, and are looking for ways to turn that code basis into models understandable under a business purposes point of view. In this paper, we introduce a technique that address this issue for C/C++ code. It delivers code-models, a representation of source code close to control flow graphs, by means of tool-supported analysis and transformations from legacy source code. Code models extend usual control flow graphs with rich information on both nodes and edges. They are immediately analyzable and verifiable in the jABC MDD framework, thus adequate for a model driven design, development, and evolution process.