Lightweight Source Model Extraction

Software engineers maintaining an existing software system often depend on the mechanized extraction of information from system artifacts. Some useful kinds of information---source models---are well-known: call graphs, file dependences, etc. Predicting every kind of source model that a software engineer may need is impossible. We have developed a lightweight approach for generating flexible and tolerant source model extractors from lexical specifications. The approach is lightweight in that the specifications are relatively small and easy to write. It is flexible in that there are few constraints on the kinds of artifacts from which source models are extracted (e.g., we can extract from source code, structured data files, documentation, etc.). It is tolerant in that there are few constraints on the condition of the artifacts.

Some more information on the LSME tool is available.