BEFRIEND - a benchmark for evaluating reverse engineering tools

Abstract

Reverse engineering tools analyze the source code of a software system and produce various results, which usually point back to the original source code. Such tools are e.g. design pattern miners, duplicated code detectors and coding rule violation checkers. Most of the time these tools present their results in different formats, which makes them very difficult to compare. In this paper, we present work in progress towards implementing a benchmark called BEFRIEND (BEnchmark For Reverse engInEering tools workiNg on source coDe) with which the outputs of reverse engineering tools can be easily and efficiently evaluated and compared. It supports different kinds of tool families, programming languages and software systems, and it enables the users to define their own evaluation criteria. Furthermore, it is a freely available web-application open to the community. We hope that in the future it will be accepted and used by the community members to evaluate and compare their tools with each other.