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28 lines
1.4 KiB
28 lines
1.4 KiB
3 years ago
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id: about-Infer
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title: About Infer
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---
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Infer is a static program analyzer for Java, C, and Objective-C, written in
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[OCaml](https://ocaml.org/). Infer is deployed within Facebook and it is running
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continuously to verify select properties of every code modification for the main
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Facebook apps for Android and iOS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and other
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apps. It can be used for other code too: Infer can also analyze C code, and Java
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code that is not Android. At present Infer is tracking problems caused by null
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pointer dereferences and resource and memory leaks, which cause some of the more
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important problems on mobile.
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Infer came to Facebook with the acquisition of the verification startup
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Monoidics in 2013. Monoidics was itself based on recent academic research,
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particularly on separation logic and bi-abduction.
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We have broadened Infer's scope within the past few years. We now refer to the
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original separation logic analysis as Infer.SL. We now also have Infer.AI, a
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general analysis framework which is an interface to the modular analysis engine
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which can be used by other kinds of program analyses (technically, called
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''abstract interpretations'', hence the AI monicker). This added generality has
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been used to develop instantiations of Infer.AI for security, concurrency and in
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other domains. Additionally, we have Infer linters for describing shallow
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syntactic analyses, using the AL language, because sometimes linters are just
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what you need.
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