Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#1

Post by cristianoc » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship
code.facebook.com

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#2

Post by capnrefsmmat » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

Are there examples of the types of bugs this finds? The embedded video has a single null dereferencing example, but I assume it does more sophisticated analysis than just that.

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#3

Post by amirmc » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

More OCaml code coming out of FB. Can add this to the list, which includes, Hack, Flow and Pfff [1].

The kinds of bugs it finds are listed at: http://fbinfer.com/docs/infer-bug-types.html

It's interesting to see how building tools with languages like OCaml can reduce bugs for teams, without them having to change the language itself. I do wonder what things would be like if such languages we're used directly more widely.

[1] http://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#4

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:26 PM UTC

Seems like mentioning the sorts of bugs this can detect should be the most important thing on the landing page.

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#5

Post by svraghavan » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

I assume it can also be used for java server side code?

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#6

Post by amirmc » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #4

Seems like mentioning the sorts of bugs this can detect should be the most important thing on the landing page.

I found a list at http://fbinfer.com/docs/infer-bug-types.html

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#7

Post by hiou » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #4

Seems like mentioning the sorts of bugs this can detect should be the most important thing on the landing page.

> At present, the analyzer reports problems caused by null pointer access and resource and memory leaks, which cause a large percentage of app crashes.

Did you mean you were looking for something more specific?

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#8

Post by dcroley » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

At least for Java, this does not look as powerful as FindBugs.

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#9

Post by jdp23 » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #4

Seems like mentioning the sorts of bugs this can detect should be the most important thing on the landing page.

The list is at http://fbinfer.com/docs/infer-bug-types.html

For Java, it's Resource leaks and Null dereferences

For C and Objective C, the list is Resource leak Memory leak Null dereference Parameter not null checked Ivar not null checked Premature nil termination argument

Re: Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship

#10

Post by _shb » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

svraghavan wrote: post #5

I assume it can also be used for java server side code?

Yes, it can be used with most Java code you can build on the command line. Just run "infer -- ". Currently, this works with javac, Ant, Maven, and Gradle. See http://fbinfer.com/docs/hello-world.html#hello-world-android for a Gradle example.