Squash

Squash is a patch generation tool to assist with Gecko:DeCOMtamination. This blog post describes how to use squash.

Squash: refactoring tool

• Quickly produce large refactoring patches
• Automate parts of deCOMtamination: class squashing & out-param rewriting(in the near future)
• Helps replacing deprecated APIs at callsites
• Problems: currently produces ugly code, CPP causes blind-spots

Dehydra: syntax & flow aware grepper

• Match on control flow
  eg can find mismatched malloc/free calls
• Inspired by UNO, but supports nested AST structures and types allowing more precise pattern matching
• Uses JS instead of a custom DSL
• Cross-function analyses being worked on
  • Can build a complete call graph, with custom hooks for callbacks, etc
  • Should be able to find unused functions
  • Prove that functions are only used in certain ways

Making Attractive Tools

• Accidental byproduct of using JS in dehydra is that analyses can easily be serialized into a form consumable by AJAX applications
  • This opens up exciting ways to visualize Mozilla code in ways that IDEs don't allow.
  • Pump Eclipse-style navigation abilities into LXR
  • Use Firefox with SVG, Canvas, (OpenGL?) to develop Firefox
  • JS is a perfect tool for Graydon's old idea of producing a consumable "AST" blob of Mozilla that one can run own scripts on to research code properties
• Squash could be integrated into any editor to do eclipse*style refactoring (Not sure if it's worth the hassle)
• Making smart & generic C/C++ tools is hard, but making generic tools that focus on Moz2 is doable
• Since the tools aren't tied to an IDE they should evolve quicker, so if you discover a boring task that could be implement as an algorithm - it may not be as hard to implement as it seems.