Ephedra - A C to Java Migration Environment: Approaches, case studies and tools for migrating legacy systems from C and C++ to Java

In this book, Dr. Johannes Martin surveys and evaluates a selection of approaches to the migration of source code to Java. To narrow the scope to a reasonable limit, he focusses on the C and C++ programming languages as the source languages. Many mature programs and program libraries exist in these languages that may be useful in a Java environment. The survey of current migration approaches reveals a number of their restrictions and disadvantages in the context of moving program libraries to Java and integrating them with Java programs. Using the experiences from this survey, Dr. Martin established a number of goals for an improved migration approach and developed the Ephedra approach by closely following these goals. To show the practicality of this approach, he implemented an automated tool that performs the migration according to the Ephedra approach and evaluated the migration process and its result with respect to the goals he established using selected case studies. The code resulting from a migration with Ephedra is maintainable and functionally equivalent to the original code save some well documented exceptions. Performance trade-offs are analysed and evaluated.