Alias Specification Manager

include/Alias/Infrastructure/Spec/ and lib/Alias/Infrastructure/Spec/ provide a unified specification layer for library functions used by pointer and alias analyses.

Main components:

AliasSpecManager loads and serves per-function specifications.
FunctionCategory classifies library routines.
AllocatorInfo, CopyInfo, ReturnAliasInfo, and ModRefInfo model specialized behaviors that analyses need.

This layer complements the generic annotation subsystem by exposing a pointer-analysis-oriented API.

What specifications express

Specifications give an analysis information that may be absent from a declaration-only library call. For example, an allocator specification can identify the size argument, whether the allocation is zero-initialized, and whether the result is returned directly or written through an out parameter. Copy specifications record source and destination arguments, while return-alias specifications describe routines such as strcpy whose return value aliases an argument.

The manager also recognizes deallocators, no-effect functions, exit routines, and mod/ref effects. A function can have more than one applicable category; clients that need the complete classification should use getCategories rather than the single primary category returned by getCategory.

Using the manager

Construct an AliasSpecManager once for an analysis pass, optionally bind it to the module with initialize, and query it while modeling calls. Both llvm::Function and function-name overloads are available, which is useful when an analysis first builds name-based seed sets. The default constructor loads the standard specification files; callers may provide their own files or load additional ones with loadSpecFile. After changing specifications at runtime, clear the query cache before relying on newly added entries.

Specifications refine models; they do not replace the ordinary handling of defined functions. Clients should continue to analyze available function bodies and use the manager to give known declarations their library semantics.