Introducing the "Debian's Automated Code Analysis" (DACA) project
Raphael Geissert
It's been a while since I started working on this project and even longer
since I had the idea. It's therefore a pleasure to finally announce the DACA
project.
= What is DACA? =
Automated Code Analysis helps detect and fix bugs and other issues in source
code. The project aims to give users easy access to a wide variety of tools to
improve quality of software distributed by Debian, while giving the tool's
developers a test bed, more visibility, and more feedback.
This is achieved by running those tools on the complete Debian archive.
= What is there for everyone? =
At the moment there are only partial reports from two tools, but the list of
tools to be evaluated and possibly included goes over twenty.
Current tools: cppcheck, and checkbashisms (at the source package level.)
= Limitations =
Most of the tools are CPU-bound, limiting considerably the number of tools and
time it takes to check the whole Debian archive. For example, with the typical
sid repository update (i.e. not during the freeze and with a working ftp-
master) it is impossible for the server running cppcheck to keep up with all
the changes.
= How can you help? =
* First of all you can go and squash bugs!
Please keep in mind what's in the notices at the bottom of the pages. They are
rather static now, but they may change later.
* Second, report false positives, fix bugs, improve the tools
Every report page (at the footer) should mention the version of the tool used
to generate it. They are usually the latest.
* Third, join the DACA project
More hands are needed to evaluate other tools, setup an infrastructure for
running them, and finally generating the web reports.
Discussing tools already available at DACA is also welcome.
There's a project request at Alioth pending its approval, but once accepted
access to the repository and mailing lists will be found at:
http://alioth.debian.org/projects/daca
(the contact email address at the DACA website will be updated accordingly)
* Fourth, donate hardware
If you have equipment with very powerful CPUs or other hardware you (or your
company) can donate, please take a look at the following page:
http://www.debian.org/donations#equipment_donations
Note that this may be handled by people unrelated to the DACA project, and as
such you should mention what you would prefer your hardware to be used for.
* And finally, figure out what I missed, provide feedback, and go back to step
one.
Thanks!
Cheers,
--
Raphael Geissert