A graph-based approach to detect unreachable methods in Java software

In this paper, we have defined a static approach named DUM (Detecting Unreachable Methods) that works on Java byte-code and detects unreachable methods by traversing a graph-based representation of the software to be analyzed. To assess the validity of our approach, we have implemented it in a prototype software system. Both our approach and prototype have been validated on four open-source software. Results have shown the correctness, the completeness, and the accuracy of the methods that our solution detected as unreachable. We have also compared our solution with: JTombstone and Google CodePro AnalytiX. This comparison suggested that DUM outperforms baselines.