Visualising CFG Differences Through Bisimulation

Deknop, Céline [UCL] Fabry, Johan Mens, Kim [UCL] Zaytsev, Vadim

Refactoring is a common step in the process of modernising software. This task is often delegated to experts, e.g. when dealing with complex legacy software. An example of such experts is the company Raincode Labs, a company that provides services in the realm of legacy modernisation. When working on code critical to a business, it is important to build up clients’ trust in refactorings being truly behaviour preserving. One aid in building trust is formal proofs. Another is providing clear visualisations of the refactoring process. In this context, we are working on a comparison of Control-Flow Graphs (CFGs) generated from programs before and after the refactoring. In this extended abstract, we briefly cover our specific use case as well as the techniques used to generate our CFGs, and finally talk about how we envisage comparing and visualising them for differences through bisimulation.