A Critical Comparison on Six Static Analysis Tools: Detection Agreement and Precision

Abstract

Background. Developers use Static Analysis Tools to control for potential quality issues in source code. Tool vendors have devised quite a number of tools, which makes it harder for practitioners to select the most suitable one for their needs. To better support developers, researchers have been conducting several studies on SATs to favor the understanding of their actual capabilities. Aims. Despite the work done so far, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding (1) what is their agreement, and (2) what is the precision of their recommendations. We aim at bridging this gap by proposing a large-scale comparison of six popular SATs.Method. We analyze 47 Java projects to assess their agreement, we compared them by manually analyzing - at line- ans class-level - whether they identify the same issues. Finally, we manually evaluate the precision of the tools. Results. The key results show little to no agreement among the tools and a low degree of precision.Conclusions. Our study provides the first overview on the agreement among different tools as well as an extensive analysis of their precision that can be used by researchers, practitioners, and tool vendors to map the current capabilities of the tools.

Keywords: Static analysis tools, Software Quality, Empirical Study