Extraction and visualization of architectural structure based on cross references among object files

Reverse engineering of legacy systems is a knowledge-intensive process to reconstruct the understanding of a system. A semi-automatic process that can extract architecture level structure from legacy systems is introduced in This work. Exact facts related to cross-references among ELF objects are extracted from files automatically, and then partitioned into hierarchical groups by close cooperation between domain experts and an assistant tool DEREF. By resolving the cross references among these groups, the architectural structure is reconstructed and then visualized using auto-layout techniques. A case study on three embedded operating system demonstrates that this process can be used to obtain a comprehensive understanding about legacy systems even without any a priori knowledge about its design.