[cfe-dev] Static analysis tool development

[Nikita Zhuk]

On 17.1.2009, at 17.12, Ben Laurie wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Nikita Zhuk <nikita at zhuk.fi> wrote:
>>
>> If/when clang static analyzer will allow easy extensibility as Ted
>> described in option [3], it would be very interesting to see if clang
>> user community could come up with some collaborative way of sharing
>> various custom checks as pluggable & configurable components. A wiki,
>> perhaps? I think that sharing programming experience and knowledge as
>> clang analyzer checks for common programming errors and best  
>> practices
>> would be useful for open source community.
>
> What would be wrong with just integrating them into the source and
> having them invdividually enableable?

There's nothing wrong with integrating additional checks into clang,  
of course. However, as a Mac developer and clang user I would like to  
be able to download and install additional checks simply by dropping  
the downloaded binary into some directory, without recompiling clang  
each time I'd like to try a new check which some other developer has  
written. I also suspect that some checks could exist which aren't  
completely in line with clang's goals, e.g. which generate too many  
false positives for average project, but which would be beneficial in  
projects of a specific type. For example, I have written some specific  
coding convention checks which have way too high level of false  
positives for being included into the official clang, but which are  
useful for developers who follow the same conventions.