# FQL: An Extensible Feature Query Language and Toolkit on Searching Software Characteristics for HPC Applications

## TL;DR

This paper introduces FQL, a new language and toolkit for extracting software features from HPC applications through static analysis, enabling efficient feature collection and extensibility for various software characteristics.

## Contribution

The paper presents a novel extensible feature query language and toolkit for static analysis of HPC software, facilitating automatic feature detection and broad applicability.

## Key findings

- Successfully applied to large-scale HPC codes
- Demonstrated extensibility for general software features
- Enabled automatic and efficient feature extraction

## Abstract

The amount of large-scale scientific computing software is dramatically increasing. In this work, we designed a new language, named feature query language (FQL), to collect and extract software features from a quick static code analysis. We designed and implemented an FQL toolkit to automatically detect and present the software features using an extensible query repository. Several large-scale, high performance computing (HPC) scientific codes have been used in the paper to demonstrate the HPC-related feature extraction and information collection. Although we emphasized the HPC features in the study, the toolkit can be easily extended to answer general software feature questions, such as coding pattern and hardware dependency.