C Code Analysis10/28/2021
Coverity has some advanced features like integrating code coverage and identifying which tests need to be run for a particular code change (tests that cover the modified code as well as tests that cover code that calls into or is called from modified code). The user interface for Coverity is superior. Series focusing on web security: is the best one I’ve seen for C++ in terms of analysis, with Klocwork a close second. Code generation takes the output of the Parser (many times in the format of an Abstract Syntax Tree) and converts it to (virtual) machine code, assembly code, or perhaps even code in another programming language - C is a popular target.Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 7:00 PM: Code analysis is the process of analyzing the code. Type checking is a good example. Semantic analysis makes sure the sentences make sense, especially in areas that are not so easily specified via the grammar.
C Code Analysis Install The ExtensionAfter the installation, the extension will welcome you with the following message: The message informs that in order to run the static analysis with the VS Code extension you need to download the C/C++test Standard, which is. In the search field, type C++test and install the extension. Basic static analysis is easy to setup.Start VS Code and go to Extensions (Ctrl + Shift + X). It also has good compiler support (we used with MSVC and IAR compilers mostly with a few others for various embedded targets thrown in). Coverity is also expensive but worth it for critical or large or aging or complex codebases. If all your tests are automated and you’ll be running them all anyway.C++support is well behind its support for C#, Java, and JavaScript (only others I have used) but it’s not without merit. Klocwork is easy to integrate and does the same kind of static analysis as coverity.SonarQube is another one. That is a particular strength of Coverity. Bioinformatics, Bayesian Inference, Mathematical Analysis, Chemistry, Geoscience, Geographic Processing.Klocwork is a close second but lacks the same usability in terms of walking developers through the explanation of its finding.There is a large overlap but each of them has a few things they do better than the others, so running multiple would be best.Static analysis with these tools is SLOW for large projects, so be prepared for that. They also find different things. Usability is good, although I’ve had a harder time breaking builds with it in Jenkins than I would have expected.All of these require a central server to be setup, so you should plan for that. Our company already had this setup so we use it for C++code, and I also have no idea what it costs, so can’t comment on whether it’s worth it.The number of developers that will be using it day-to-day.After evaluating the tools on as much of your code as possible (N products or M platforms or whatever is representative), narrow it down to (at least) two contenders, and be ready to point out all the cases where contender A failed to find something important that contender B did. IME, vendors may not reveal other models to you unless you ask about it ideally, push for an unlimited license based on some other reasonable "sizing" criteria, e.g. What you don't want to happen here, is ending up having to create a new fiefdom that controls/polices access to the tool because you're afraid of going over your licensed LOC limit. And finally, if you have a library/component that is re-used in N products, it will count that code N times. In every case I've seen, the static analyzers stupidly over count the amount of LOC that has been "scanned" in various ways for example, it might count all the LOC for third-party dependencies against you, unless you spend the next 1000 man-years sweating bullets while fighting with configuration/settings/rules to ignore them. That,s something I’m working to change but C++ tooling is what it is and all of these tools have more robust tooling for other languages.For C and C++ code, in my experience, CodeSonar and Coverity are in a league of their own, with the next rung down being occupied by Klocwork and lesser known ones like Fortify, Polyspace, etc.If I could travel back in time and give myself - who was in your position some years ago - just two tips that aren't already mentioned here, they would be:When selecting one of these tools, it's VERY important to keep in mind what their licensing model is - typically they determine the price based on the amount of LOC (Lines of Code) that gets "scanned", which can make managing the tool a nightmare. Youth snowboard sizing chartcppcheck and cl /analyze know some APIs and will tell you about lost resources (e.g. I have been using Klocwork, QA-C++, cppcheck, and previously cl /analyze. My experience is that on a moderately tested codebase, such tools find 99% false positives (unless you count simple syntactic issues like a "the body of an if must be a braced block" rule). Turn on all warnings, force devs to get down to zero warnings, and our code will magically get good". What do you want to do with it, and how do you want to deal with its findings?Project managers tend to think "cool, now we have this tool. Citrix receiver for imacklocwork claims I'm leaking resources if I have a function called open klocwork claims to be able to prove that the result of std::string::c_str is not null-terminated I think both cppcheck and klocwork find unintentional fallthrough in switch/case again, I wonder why this is not a standard warningFalse positives these tools recently annoyed me with: I wouldn't miss anything if I had none of the commercial tools. cppcheck wants me to pass everything by reference, which I often refuse to do to avoid aliasing problemsTL DR: I think using the free / available tools (cppcheck, cl /analyze, warnings, valgrind) will make a good jump forward if you were using none before. cppcheck warns if I access a std::unique_ptr I have moved away from (which is well-defined for unique_ptr) klocwork claims 1<<8 overflows (because that's what MISRA-C++'s special type system says) ![]()
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