A Compiler Infrastructure for High-Performance Java

This paper describes the zJava compiler infrastructure, a high-level framework for the analysis and transformation of Java programs. This framework provides a robust system, guaranteeing under transformations both the consistency of its internal structure and the syntactic correctness of the represented code. We address several challenges unique to Java, which have not been addressed by earlier frameworks. These include automatic maintenance of complex symbol scope information under transformations, insertion of implicit code to accurately model the source program, incorporation of compiled code into the representation, and representation of the complex control flow of exception handling constructs. We include support for the sharing of information between compiler passes, and a framework for interprocedural analysis. We believe that the features we introduce in the zJava compiler infrastructure will result in a means of rapidly prototyping new Java compiler analyses. We give a number of examples illustrating the use and utility of the infrastructure.