Source Code Analysis: Current and Future Trends & Challenges

The increasing complexity of software systems is making source code analysis a more economic option to automate the identification of defects, vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. This paper initially outlines the general anatomy of automatic source code analyzers, dimensions of analysis that can be performed with today’s state-of-the-art tools, various limitations of automatic source code analysis in the areas of programming language coverage, quantity of false positive claims, system architecture breakdowns and code/time complexity. The paper is concluded by presenting future tentative trends of source code analysis.