Overview  

IA4J stands for Immutability Analyzer for Java, it is a tool for analyzing the immutability information of Java programs. IA4J was designed and implemented by Software Engineering Group, Nanjing University.

An object is immutable if its state cannot be changed during its life cycle. This characteristic of object is called immutability. The immutability information can be applied to conduct program analysis, testing, verification, and so on.

Using IA4J, we can analyze the following immutability informations:

1.Class Immutability: It can tell whether a class is immutable, mutable or undecided.

2.Field Immutability: It can tell whether a field is immutable, mutable, escape or invokeundecided.

3.Method Immutability: It can tell whether a method is immutable, mutable or undecided.

Documentation

• Liqian YU, Linzhang WANG, Bin LEI, Jianhua ZHAO, Xuandong LI.Combined Static and Dynamic Immutability Analysis of Java Program. The Chinese Journal of Computer, April,2010，33 col.



• User Manual for IA4J(IA4J UserManual).

Download

You may download IA4J via the download page.

The current version of IA4J is 1.0

We also provide some case studies . They can be found in the case studies page.