This talk presents CodeProber, a tool for interactive exploration of compilers and static analysis tools. CodeProber allows the user to explore properties on an AST. However, instead of showing the AST to the user, most interactions happen in terms of the original source code. This allows for a quick and natural interaction that helps with the development and debugging of language tooling. CodeProber can be a complement to more traditional tools, like debuggers and print statements. CodeProber works especially well with tools built using the JastAdd metacompiler. In the talk, usage of CodeProber will be demonstrated together with the Java compiler ExtendJ. The compiler will have been prepared with a bug, and it will be identified and fixed during the presentation.

CodeProber has been used in two courses: “Compilers” and “Program Analysis”. Students used CodeProber to help develop and debug features during labs in both courses. Overall feedback has been good. Some of the findings from students will be presented during the talk.

CodeProber was initially presented in a 2022 SLE paper “Property Probes: Source Code Based Exploration of Program Analysis Results”. Since then, CodeProber has had significant feature growth. The new features, and how it relates to our future plans for the tool, will also be presented.