GettingStarted:wala.eclipse

Note for developers: the wala.eclipse functionality is newer and less mature than the rest of the WALA, and so the APIs may be subject to more frequent churn and change. WALA newbies may want to experiment with the rest of WALA first, before diving into the guts of wala.eclipse.

Getting started with WALA for Eclipse

WALA now includes at least one example application that contributes fuctionality to an Eclipse workbench. (Thanks, Annie Ying!). The current example provides a call graph view, linked to the Eclipse workspace, built by WALA. This example also illustrates how the CAst System is integrated into WALA, so you need to have that---both the JDT support for Java and JavaScript---to build the Eclipse projects, which are the following:

 * com.ibm.wala.eclipse (javadoc) (source)    o The current examples of Eclipse integration of WALA  * com.ibm.wala.eclipse.tests (javadoc) (source)    o Tests of the current examples of Eclipse integration of WALA

Running the Example

This example builds a call graph and displays as a tree view in the Eclipse IDE.

Before running this example, check out the additional project com.ibm.wala.eclipse to your Eclipse workspace. Set up the WALA properties as you would for non-Eclipse examples. Now run the wala.eclipse launcher. This should launch another instance of Eclipse. The workspace in this new Eclipse instance is likely empty; you should import whatever projects or code you would like to explore.

(For javascript, Julian's favorite example is to get ajaxslt from sourceforge (http://goog-ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/), and then run the call graph viewer on the test pages, test/xpath.html and test/xslt.html.)

The call graph view will add an Open WALA Call Tree option to the pop-up menu obtained by right-clicking in the Package Explorer view for four kinds of items:

• Files ending in the .jar extension

This will build a call graph using the classes in the .jar file as the analysis scope, and all main methods in classes in the jar as entry points

• Java projects

This will build a call graph using all classes in the project as the analysis scope, and all main methods in the project as entry points

• Individual classes within Java projects

This will build a call graph using the classes in the enclosing project as the analysis scope and the main method of the selected class as the entry point

• Files ending in the .html extension

This will build a call graph of the JavaScript code in the selected html file, using call backs declared in the page as the entry points.

To activate the view, first right click the on the desired target, say in the Package Explorer view. Then, select WALA Call Tree from the pop-up menu. Alternatively, you can get the view through the Show View dialog (select the jar file; then go to the Window menu --> Show View --> Other... --> Java --> WALA Call Tree). For a Java project with source code, double-clicking on a method node or call node in the view should respectively highlight the corresponding method declaration or method call in the source.

Note that one characteristic of the current WALA Call Tree view is that it is not currently refreshed: once it is open, it stays with the same view, ignoring any further attempts to view a call tree. To view a new tree, it is necessary to explicitly close the current view before requesting a new tree. This should be changed at some point.