[cfe-dev] Idea for better invoking static analysis via command line

[Craig, Ben via cfe-dev]

On 2/5/2016 1:52 PM, Anna Zaks wrote:
>
>> On Feb 5, 2016, at 6:15 AM, Craig, Ben <ben.craig at codeaurora.org 
>> <mailto:ben.craig at codeaurora.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2/4/2016 5:52 PM, <Alexander G. Riccio> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Consider making "no detailed analysis" an option for
>>>     -enable-analyze-pass to help with these use cases
>>>
>>>
>>> Eh? Do you mean less detailed output or less detailed analysis done 
>>> by clang?
>> I mean analysis that just emits diagnostics on the console, but 
>> doesn't emit a .plist or .html report.
>
> How user-friendly is the text output? Had anyone analyzed a large 
> codebase, triaged the results, and fixed the reported bugs with just 
> relying on the text output?
>

If you have a large, "dirty" code base, then the test output on its own 
isn't going to be terribly useful.

However, you can get useful information from the text output if you 
start with a code base that already runs cleanly through the static 
analyzer.  The warning is likely pointing at some code that you just 
modified.  An example from one of the tests...

   long *lp1 = malloc(sizeof(short)); // expected-warning {{Result of 
'malloc' is converted to a pointer of type 'long', which is incompatible 
with sizeof operand type 'short'}}

That warning text on the command line is useful by itself, especially if 
it is fresh code.

Some checkers may produce less useful output.  That's fine, and I can 
understand why we may not want to make stdout-only the default as a 
result.  I do think it's useful as an option though.

-- 
Employee of Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.
Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of Code Aurora Forum, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project

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