TY  - JOUR
AU  - Haase, Oliver 
PY  - 2016
TI  - Abstract Interpretation of Java Bytecode for Immutability Analysis
JF  - Journal of Computer Science
VL  - 12
IS  - 7
DO  - 10.3844/jcssp.2016.314.322
UR  - https://thescipub.com/abstract/jcssp.2016.314.322
AB  - Even though immutability is a desirable property, especially in a multi-threaded environment, implementing immutable Java classes is surprisingly hard because of a lack of language support. We present a static analysis tool using abstract bytecode interpretation that checks Java classes for compliance with a set of rules that together constitute state-based immutability. Being realized as a Find Bugs plug in, the tool can easily be integrated into most IDEs and hence the software development process. Our evaluation on a large, real world codebase shows that the average run-time effort for a single class is in the range of a few milliseconds, with only a very few statistical spikes.