This repository hosts the SootDiff analysis tool. SootDiff allows the comparison of the Java ByteCode create by different Java compilers. To do so it uses static analysis and optimizations to unify the generated ByteCode, e.g. Constant Propagation, Dead Code Elimination, String Handling. Its goal is to provide researchers and practitioners with a tool and library on which they can base their own research projects and product implementations.
You can either build SootDiff on your own using Maven, or you can download a release from here on Github.
The Release Page contains all pre-built JAR files for each release that we officially publish. We recommend using the latest and greatest version unless you have a specific issue that prevents you from doing so. In that case, please let us know.
To build SootDiff with Maven run
mvn install
or to build a standalone jar-with-dependencies run
mvn clean compile assembly:single
If you want to read the details on how SootDiff works, the published paper SootDiff @SOAP'19,Phoenix, AZ, USA is a good place to start.
SootDiff is licensed under the MIT license, see LICENSE file. This basically means that you are free to use the tool ( even in commercial, closed-source projects).
The class src/test/java/MainCompareArtifacts.java can be used to compare multiple jars on the basis of class sha,tlshs
and timestamps and produces a markdown report of that.
Invoke the main method with parameters -inJars jar1,jar2,jar3 -fileFilter pathToFilterFile.txt
The filter file can be used to specify classes of interest (e.g. classes fixed in a fixing commit). Make sure to specify
the files as they would be located in the analyzed jar, e.g., in a commit the change might be related
to src/main/java/pack/a/b.java, in the jar it would be referenced from the package onwards and in class
format: pack/a/b.class.