cppcheck static C/C++ code analysis

[Gary J. Ferland]

The new version of eclipse, Juno, is out and among the new features is the ability to use external lints.  They explicitly mention this one:

http://cppcheck.sourceforge.net/

from a cursory exam cppcheck looks interesting. 

Peter had put some effort into one static code analyser, and I worked with a commercial product called PCLint, but neither made it over the C++ transition.  cppcheck  supports C++

wonder whether supporting such a tool would be worth the bother?  They generally need a fair number of hints to be useful.  This tool does appear to be actively supported, judging from the revision rate.

Gary

[Peter van Hoof]

Hi Gary,

I only see a Windows download. But I managed to compile this from
source. When I ran it on Cloudy, I got lots of this

<error file="atom_fe2ovr.cpp" line="0" id="toomanyconfigs"
severity="style" msg="Interrupted checking because of too many #ifdef
configurations."/>

So I cranked up the maximum in lib/settings.cpp

--- settings.cpp~ 2012-06-30 18:10:27.000000000 +0200
+++ settings.cpp 2012-08-21 09:52:27.662819947 +0200
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
_jobs(1),
_exitCode(0),
_showtime(0),
- _maxConfigs(12),
+ _maxConfigs(100),
reportProgress(false),
checkConfiguration(false)
{

Now it runs to completion. But so far I have not been able to get many
messages out. I guess I need to do some manual reading... Normally you
can't shut these lints up, but this one is clearly different...

Gary, what flags did you use? Even with cppcheck --enable=all I get very
little output.

% cppcheck --enable=all ~/c_sources/cloudy/source/ | & egrep -v
'Checking /home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source|files checked'
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test42.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test43.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test44.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test45.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test46.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test52.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test54.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test56.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test58.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test63.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test65.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test66.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test73.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test74.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test75.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test76.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test77.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test86.cpp:5]: (style)
Variable 'p' is assigned a value that is never used
Checking usage of global functions..
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/sys_gcc_shared/cloudy_lua.cpp:47]:
(style) The function 'luaopen_cloudy' is never used
[/home/pvh/c_sources/cloudy/source/compiler_tests/test01.cpp:3]: (style)
The function 'test' is never used
<error id="missingInclude" severity="style" msg="Cppcheck cannot find
all the include files (use --check-config for details)"/>


Cheers,

Peter.

--
Peter van Hoof
Royal Observatory of Belgium
Ringlaan 3
1180 Brussel
Belgium
http://homepage.oma.be/pvh

[Gary J. Ferland]

Now it runs to completion. But so far I have not been able to get many messages out. I guess I need to do some manual reading... Normally you can't shut these lints up, but this one is clearly different...

Gary, what flags did you use? Even with cppcheck --enable=all I get very little output.

i asked about it because the juno release of eclipse, the ide i use, includes it.  It must have quite a following for them to support it that way.

I only looked into it briefly, wondering if anybody else had worked with it.

of course, it could be that there are no bugs in cloudy .....  

Gary

--
http://groups.google.com/group/cloudy-dev

Gary J. Ferland
Physics, Univ of Kentucky
Lexington KY 40506 USA
tel: 859 257-8795
www.nublado.org

[Peter van Hoof]

On 2012-08-21 13:29, Gary J. Ferland wrote:
>>
>>
>> Now it runs to completion. But so far I have not been able to get many
>> messages out. I guess I need to do some manual reading... Normally you
>> can't shut these lints up, but this one is clearly different...
>>
>> Gary, what flags did you use? Even with cppcheck --enable=all I get
>> very little output.
>
>
> i asked about it because the juno release of eclipse, the ide i use,
> includes it. It must have quite a following for them to support it that
> way.
>
> I only looked into it briefly, wondering if anybody else had worked with it.
>
> of course, it could be that there are no bugs in cloudy .....

That must be it!

I asked because i have an output file from cppcheck in my home directory
with significantly more output, so somebody must have gotten it to work
more verbosely. I have no recollection where the file comes from, so I
assumed it was from you...

Peter.

> www.nublado.org <http://www.nublado.org/>
>
> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/cloudy-dev

[Gary J. Ferland]

I asked because i have an output file from cppcheck in my home directory with significantly more output, so somebody must have gotten it to work more verbosely. I have no recollection where the file comes from, so I assumed it was from you...

nope, not me.

[Robin Williams]

I tried cppcheck a while back & posted the results, which may be the
origin of Peter's file.

Robin

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/cloudy-dev

[Gary J. Ferland]

this page mentions cppcheck and the clang static analyzer - downloaded the later to test

blog.kowalczyk.info/article/Tools-that-find-bugs-in-c-and-c-code-via-static-.html