METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ANNOTATING A COMPUTER PROGRAM TO FACILITATE SUBSEQUENT PROCESSING OF THE PROGRAM

A method and apparatus annotates a computer program to facilitate subsequent processing of the program. Code representing the program is generated at a first computer system. Annotations are generated for the code that provide information about the code. At a second computer, the code is processed according to the information provided by the annotations. The annotations, for example, can indicate a control flow graph representing a flow of execution of the code. Also, the information provided by the annotations can be a register allocation that maps data structures of the code to registers of the second computer system. The second computer system can use such information to guide the interpreting of the code or to transform the code into a more optimized form. Other exemplary annotations can indicate that running the executable form of the code would perform an unauthorized operation at the second computer system. The second computer system could then reject the code instead of performing subsequent processing on the code. When the source of the annotations is untrusted by the second computer system, the second computer system can use a checker to verify the integrity of the annotations.