[cfe-dev] Proposal: Integrate CodeChecker analyzer infrastructure

Mon Apr 25 09:22:56 PDT 2016

> On Apr 25, 2016, at 8:30 AM, Alexander Kornienko <alexfh at google.com> wrote:
> 
> (having dug the e-mail from the bottom of my inbox)
> 
> I certainly like the idea of having an open-source web-based results browser for clang-tidy and clang static analyzer results. I like the features of CodeChecker (issue browsing, suppression, diffs). And I can suggest more potentially useful features like:
>   * code-centric browsing of the issues (with directory view showing aggregate numbers of issues in each file/subdirectory and a file view showing all issues in the file in a compact form - without execution paths);
>   * an easy way to apply fixes for a subset of issues in a file / directory.
> 
> I'm not sure though, if integrating CodeChecker source code to the LLVM project brings a lot of benefits to the CodeChecker developers and/or users. I don't have any objections, I just don't understand at this point, what are you expecting to achieve by moving the code to LLVM.
> 

The benefit to the CodeChecker team is that they will gain more visibility (both in terms of users and fellow developers).
The benefit to LLVM is that we could gain a much better issue viewing and triaging tool than what we have now. Ex: my hope is that CodeChecker would replace scan-view.

Anna.

> On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 1:10 PM, György Orbán <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We started to restructure and cleanup our source code for a better integration with the current lit testing environment in llvm/clang.
> After we are done we can start to merge the source in.
> 
> On 03/02/2016 06:42 PM, Anna Zaks wrote:
> Adding CodeChecker infrastructure would be very valuable to those who use clang for bug finding. It provides a single place to view the bugs reported by different tools such as the static analyzer and clang-tidy. The ability to track bugs over time and cutting a baseline so that only the new bugs are reported is important for large projects that cannot address all of the issues at once.
> 
> Let’s proceed with merging it in. Please, split commits into incremental logical chunks. (http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#incremental-development <http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#incremental-development>)
> 
> On Feb 23, 2016, at 2:10 AM, György Orbán via cfe-dev <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> We would like to add CodeChecker (https://github.com/Ericsson/codechecker <https://github.com/Ericsson/codechecker>) analyzer infrastructure.
> 
> This is an alternative tool to scan-build with extended functionality.
> Some of the main features are: track issues over time, suppress false positives, detect new issues by comparing multiple analyzer run results,
> view and compare results in a web browser or in the command line. A more detailed feature list can be found below (*).
> The analyzer infrastructure is built in a way that integrating a new analyzer can be easily done.
> We are developing a tool which can be used easily by the developers or by automated continuous integration tools and view the results from multiple analyzers in a common way.
> We think it would serve as a good base for displaying and tracking bugs that can be detected by the other clang tools such as clang-tidy which is already supported.
> 
> For example, you can find the analysis results of the LLVM code 3.6.2 and 3.7.1 here: http://modelserver.inf.elte.hu:5000 <http://modelserver.inf.elte.hu:5000/>
> 
> Main questions to the community:
> 0. Does the Clang community like the idea?
> 1. CodeChecker has some 3rd party dependencies see below (**), are they acceptable?
> 2. Is the community satisfied with the CodeChecker name?
> Unless the name is a blocker on your side, I’d like to discuss it later once we see what the interface looks like. Frankly, I am not a fan of this name sine it’s very ambiguous.
> I do not think it is a blocker, we can discuss it later.
> Integration plan:
> 0. CodeChecker should use scan-build.py (OSX support) to generate the compilation database instead of the current LD_PRELOAD technique
> Should we implement this feature (with scan-build.py intercept) before we merge our code base or after?
> 
> 1. Migrate CodeChecker testing infrastructure to the current LLVM testing infrastructure
> 
> (*) Most notably it extends the current tool set with the following features:
> - stores the result of multiple large analysis run results efficiently (opposed to scan-build/scan-view static htmls)
> - run multiple analyzers, currently Clang Static Analyzer and Clang-Tidy is supported
> - dynamic web based defect viewer (instead of static html)
> - a SQLite/PostgreSQL based defect storage & management (both are optional, results can be shown on standard output in quickcheck mode)
> - update analyzer results only for modified files (depends on the build system)
> - compare analysis results (new/resolved/unresolved bugs compared to a baseline)
> - filter analysis results (checker name, severity, source file name ...)
> - skip analysis in specific source directories if required
> - suppression of false positives (in config file or in the source)
> - Thrift API based server-client model for storing bugs and viewing results.
> - It is possible to connect multiple bug viewers. Currently a web-based viewer and a command line viewer are provided.
>    (command line client is the recommended way to connect into Continuous Integration loops)
> 
> Command line examples of usage can be found here: https://github.com/Ericsson/codechecker/blob/master/docs/usage.md <https://github.com/Ericsson/codechecker/blob/master/docs/usage.md>
> 
> CodeChecker supports multiple use cases:
> - Small projects/several source files (quick feedback)
>      No database is used, analysis results are shown in on the command line only
> - Medium size projects (~500 files)
>      Results are stored in SQLite/PostgreSQL database and can be viewed from command line or web viewer clients
> - Large size projects (>500 files)
>      Results are stored in PostgreSQL database and can be viewed from command line or web viewer clients
> 
> There are currently discussions about analyzer tool support in multiple email threads:
> 
> http://clang-developers.42468.n3.nabble.com/Idea-for-better-invoking-static-analysis-via-command-line-td4049670.html <http://clang-developers.42468.n3.nabble.com/Idea-for-better-invoking-static-analysis-via-command-line-td4049670.html>
> http://clang-developers.42468.n3.nabble.com/Proposal-Integrate-static-analysis-test-suites-td4048967.html <http://clang-developers.42468.n3.nabble.com/Proposal-Integrate-static-analysis-test-suites-td4048967.html>
> 
> CodeChecker provides solutions for many problems discussed there:
> 
> - Problem: Different analyzers provide different output formats (Clang Static Analyzer provides plist/html/command line, Clang-tidy provides command line output only)
>    Solution: With Codechecker analyzer results from multiple analyzers can be viewed in a common way for developers or other tools for further result processing.
> 
> - Problem: CC environment variable overwriting by previous scan-build version (written in perl) is not always a good solution.
>    Solution: Compilation database is generated by CodeChecker (currently using the LD_PRELOAD technique, later with scan-build.py for OSX support).
> 
> - Problem: Analyzer has multiple command line arguments which could be changed by time, the end users should not be affected.
>    Solution: CodeChecker hides the clang analyzer specific options from the user. Many options are preconfigured. But forwarding options without modifications to the analyzers is supported.
> 
> - Problem: Understanding analyzer results might be harder if only command line results are available (currently generated static html sites do not scale and it is hard to manage).
>    Solution: Analysis steps can be viewed in command line with quickcheck or in the web viewer (dynamically generated based on the database), which can help to understand the analysis results.
> 
> (**) 3rd party dependencies for various features:
> - Python 2.7.5 (Python Software Foundation) - required to run CodeChecker
> - SQLAlchemy (MIT) - Python SQL toolkit and Object Relational Mapper, for supporting multiple database backends
> - Alembic (MIT) - required for database migration support which is only available for PostgreSQL database
> - pg8000 (BSD) or psycopg2 (LGPL) - at least one database connector is required for PostgreSQL database support (both are supported)
> We should NOT include dependencies on LGPL!
> This is an optional runtime dependency (it is not included), we do not require it, we just support it at runtime if available at the host machine.
> 
> - Thrift (Apache v2.0) - cross-language service building framework to handle data transfer for report storage and result viewer clients
> - Codemirror (MIT) - view source code in the browser
> - Jsplumb (community edition, MIT) - draw bug paths
> - Marked (BSD) - view documentation for checkers written in markdown (generated dynamically)
> - Dojotoolkit (BSD) - main framework for the web UI
> - Highlightjs (BSD) - required for highlighting the source code
> 
> For further information check out our GitHub (https://github.com/Ericsson/codechecker <https://github.com/Ericsson/codechecker>) page.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Gyorgy Orban
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> Best Regards,
> Gyorgy Orban
> 
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