(Possibly) Frequently Asked Questions

  • Why is there no link to the download site?
  • Is there other work done on the Qualitas Corpus?
  • Some of the systems seem to be missing libraries so they cannot be executed?
  • I want to do studies involving dynamic analysis, can I use the corpus for this?
  • Is there any way I can interactively, or otherwise explore the corpus?
  • I need a collection of systems with specific characteristics. Does the corpus have such?
  • The corpus seems to have problems installing on windows. Is there a distribution for windows?
  • What other software corpora are there?
  • What are other related projects?

    Why is there no link to the download site?
    There are two main reasons why the corpus is not available for direct download. One is, we want to have some idea of the interest in its use and the degree to which it is being used. At the moment, the interest is low enough that the manual "email for access" method works just fine. You will usually get a response in under a day. If interest picks up, we may introduce an auto-response method for access.

    Note that once you know the location for downloads, you are welcome to continue to access it whenever you like. So if a new release is made, you do not need to check with us before acquiring it.

    The other reason is that New Zealand's international internet connection is only slightly better than a piece of damp string and there are costs involved with its use. All indications are that this isn't a huge problem, but we have been cautious about allowing open slather on the corpus.

    Is there other work done on the Qualitas Corpus?
    Yes, some of which are listed below.

    Some of the systems seem to be missing libraries so they cannot be executed?
    I want to do studies involving dynamic analysis, can I use the corpus for this?
    The corpus was designed with static analysis in mind so we have not made much effort to ensure the systems are executable. In particular, to simplify the cost of adding new systems, we do not try to find any missing libraries (part of the cost is figuring out which version of the library should be included).

    However we have had a number of requests regarding using it for dynamic analysis, so we would like to make it more useful eventually. Unfortunately lack of resources mean that this is likely to take a while. As a first step, we have identified those systems that either do not use third-party libraries, or provide the third-party libraries as part of their distributions (see this list). These systems, in principle, should be able to be executed. This information is still in a fairly raw state, so should be treated with caution.

    Those who need systems that can execute may like to try other corpora.

    Is there any way I can interactively, or otherwise explore the corpus?
    There is nothing in the corpus itself to support exploring the corpus other than the catalogue. However people are using the corpus is input to their tools. For example

    The corpus seems to have problems installing on windows. Is there a distribution for windows?
    We've had some reports of problems installing on windows. Some seem to relate to long filenames or filenames with non ASCII characters. Others related to the installer script not properly handling spaces in filenames. It's possible there are no problems on Windows 7, but this has not been confirmed. There are no plans to produce a distribution that has been tested for Windows.

    What other software corpora are there?
    I need a collection of systems with specific characteristics. Does the corpus have such?
    As noted above, the Qualitas Corpus was designed with static analysis in mind. There are other corpora that have been created with this goal in mind, but they do not appear to be actively maintained. There are also corpora that have been created with other goals in mind. Those we know to be actively maintained are:

    What are other related projects?