Visual Lint Analysis Tools

Visual Lint currently supports the following static code analysis tools:

 

If there is a particular analysis tool you would like to see supported in Visual Lint please contact us.

Support for TICS Analyzer can be made available if required. Please contact us if you require this.

 

Clang-Tidy

Clang-Tidy is an open source C++ static analysis tool from the LLVM Project which is notable for its ability to automatically correct many of the issues it finds.

Clang-Tidy is heavily configurable and fully supports modern C++ code.

Within Visual Lint, you can run Clang-Tidy analysis incrementally on entire solutions/workspaces, and selectively apply fixes on a per-file basis if required.

 

CppCheck

CppCheck is an open source C++ analysis tool, and may therefore be freely downloaded. Although not as established as PC-lint, it is evolving rapidly so if you are new to C++ analysis it is definitely worth trying out.

Among the capabilities of CppCheck are:

 

cpplint

cpplint is the Google C++ Style Checker. Although a style checker rather than a static analysis tool, this script complements the Google C++ Style Guide.

As the style checker is implemented as a Python 2.x script, you will need a compatible Python installation (we recommend you use Python 2.7) in order to run it.

 

FindBugs

FindBugs is an open source Java static analysis tool which can analyse either individual Java source files or complete Java projects.

 

FxCop

FxCop is a static analysis tool from Microsoft for analysing .NET assemblies.

Visual Lint currently supports FxCop for the analysis of C# projects, but this can be extended to include other .NET project types such as C++/CLI and VB.NET if required. Please contact us if you are interested in this.

Note that as FxCop analyses only compiled assemblies, manual analysis of individual source files is not available with FxCop.

 

Gimpel PC-lint and PC-lint Plus

Visual Lint supports the industry standard PC-lint 9.0 and its successor PC-lint Plus C/C++ static analysis tools by Gimpel Software.

Both are command line code analysis tools which can be configured to support a wide variety of compilers and development environments and will thoroughly check your C/C++ source code for bugs, glitches, inconsistencies, non-portable constructs, and much more. Using them you can find and fix bugs much more quickly than with traditional debugging techniques.

Among the many capabilities of PC-lint and PC-lint Plus are:

In the many years since PC-lint was first released in 1985, numerous enhancements were made to the original product. These include major language enhancements such as C++ support in 1993, and also many ground breaking innovations in static analysis. PC-lint 9.0 continued this tradition by adding ground breaking capabilities such as analysis of thread behaviour, highly capable variable tracking and support for precompiled headers.

PC-lint Plus is the successor product to PC-lint 9.0. It uses the industry standard Clang front end and is designed for the analysis of modern C++ (C++ 11/14/17 and beyond) codebases.

We strongly recommend using PC-lint Plus rather than PC-lint 9.0 with modern C++ compilers (such as those supplied with Visual Studio 2013 onwards or GCC 4.x/5.x) .

Please see https://www.gimpel.com/for_pclint_users.html or contact us for details.

 

Vera++

Vera++ is a programmable tool for verification, analysis and transformation of C++ source code. It is published as open source software under the Boost Software Licence, and may therefore be freely downloaded.

Vera++ is unusual among established static analysis tools in that it allows you to write your own rules. As such, if you are looking to check code against a custom ruleset this is a tool you should probably be aware of.