Dead code elimination for web applications written in dynamic languages Master’s Thesis Hidde Boomsma Dead code elimination for web applications written in dynamic languages THESIS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in COMPUTER ENGINEERING by Hidde Boomsma born in Naarden 1984, the Netherlands Software Engineering Research Group Department of Software Technology Department of Software Engineering Faculty EEMCS, Delft University of Technology Hostnet B.V. Delft, the Netherlands Amsterdam, the Netherlands www.ewi.tudelft.nl www.hostnet.nl © 2012 Hidde Boomsma. All rights reserved Cover picture: Hoster the Hostnet mascot Dead code elimination for web applications written in dynamic languages Author: Hidde Boomsma Student id: 1174371 Email:
[email protected] Abstract Dead code is source code that is not necessary for the correct execution of an application. Dead code is a result of software ageing. It is a threat for maintainability and should therefore be removed. Many organizations in the web domain have the problem that their software grows and de- mands increasingly more effort to maintain, test, check out and deploy. Old features often remain in the software, because their dependencies are not obvious from the software documentation. Dead code can be found by collecting the set of code that is used and subtract this set from the set of all code. Collecting the set can be done statically or dynamically. Web applications are often written in dynamic languages. For dynamic languages dynamic analysis suits best. From the maintainability perspective a dynamic analysis is preferred over static analysis because it is able to detect reachable but unused code.