Frequently Asked Questions

• Which analysis tools does Visual Lint support?
• Which platforms does Visual Lint support?
• Which versions of Visual Studio and Visual C++ is Visual Lint compatible with?
• Which editions of Visual Studio and Visual C++ is Visual Lint compatible with?
• Which versions of PC-lint is Visual Lint compatible with?
• Does the Visual Lint installer include a trial version of PC-lint?
• Which programming languages does Visual Lint support?
• How closely integrated into Visual Studio is Visual Lint?
• Can Visual Lint be run from the command line (e.g. as part of an overnight build process)?
• Can Visual Lint handle Visual C++ project files containing .vsprops files and Visual Studio Environment Variables?
• Can I pass my own parameters to the PC-lint executable?
• Help! I'm getting analysis errors in the Visual C++ header files. What could be wrong?
  
• What happened to Visual Lint Free Edition?
• How do I change the font used in the Message Lookup Display?
• How do I perform a silent installation of Visual Lint?

Which analysis tools does Visual Lint support?

Visual Lint uses the PC-lint C/C++ code analysis tool. To use Visual Lint, you must have a licenced copy of PC-lint.

If you need to purchase a copy of PC-lint you can purchase one from us or via PhaedruS SystemS - the only European distributor able to supply PC-lint and Flexe-lint site licences.

Support for additional analysis tools (e.g. CppCheck for C/C++ , ClockSharp for C# and FindBugs for Java) is under development. Please contact us if you are interested in using Visual Lint with analysis tools other than PC-lint.

Which platforms does Visual Lint support?

Which versions of Visual Studio and Visual C++ is Visual Lint compatible with?

A Visual Lint plug-in for the Eclipse development environment is under development. Please contact us if you are interested in using Visual Lint within Eclipse or other non-Microsoft development environments.

Which editions of Visual Studio and Visual C++ is Visual Lint compatible with?

Which versions of PC-lint is Visual Lint compatible with?

Does the Visual Lint installer include a trial version of PC-lint?

If you need to purchase a copy of PC-lint you can purchase one from us or via PhaedruS SystemS - the only European distributor able to supply PC-lint and Flexelint site licences.

Which programming languages does Visual Lint support?

How closely integrated into Visual Studio is Visual Lint?

Recenlt versions of Visual Studio such as Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 allow extremely close integration into the IDE. Under these environments, Visual Lint will integrate its commands into the Visual Studio menubar and command bars, and even add a "Perform Lint Analysis" command to the context menu in the code editor. The three Visual Lint toolwindows can be docked anywhere in the IDE, and can be pinned and autohidden just like any other window.

Under Visual C++ 6.0 and eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 the level of integration we can offer is, unfortunately, rather more limited. Visual Lint will still create its own toolbar (named "VisLint" rather than "Visual Lint" due to the rather low level method we have to use to set the name), but it cannot add commands to the menubar or control the state of the toolbar commands (disabled, selected etc.) as the IDE simply does not provide the capability for add-ins to do this. Even worse, the IDE does not provide any capabilities to integrate third party toolwindows. We have, however, been able to integrate them into the Workspace View (but not the Output Window - at least not yet) using window subclassing techniques.

Can Visual Lint be run from the command line (e.g. as part of an overnight build process)?

Unfortunately not; we recommend that you use our companion product LintProject Professional for this purpose instead. As LintProject Professional and Visual Lint share the same project file parsing, analysis results handling and reporting code (LintProject Pro reports are basically the same ones generated by Visual Lint Enterprise Edition) you should be able to obtain comparable analysis reports from either in most cases.

Can Visual Lint handle Visual C++ project files containing .vsprops files and Visual Studio Environment Variables?

Yes, it can. Although PC-lint does not currently expand such project files correctly, Visual Lint will by default read the project files itself in order to write the project indirect (or project.lnt) files needed to perform the analysis.

During this process it will expand Visual Studio environment variables and recursively parse .vsprops files in order to correctly identify any additional include or preprocessor directives defined in that manner. Please contact us if you have specific requirements.

Can I pass my own parameters to the PC-lint executable?

Help! I'm getting analysis errors in the Visual C++ header files. What could be wrong?

If you are receiving errors (as opposed to warnings, elective notes etc.) in the Visual C++ header files, there is almost certainly a mismatch between your analysis configuration and the configuration presented to the C++ compiler itself. This is most likely to occur if a project configuration is incorrectly handled or the include folder specification is not set up correctly in the std.lnt global indirect file.

The first thing we would suggest is that you incorporate the error suppression files riverblade-lint9.lnt (for PC-lint 9.0) and/or riverblade-lint8.lnt (or PC-lint 8.0) into your std.lnt file. These files can be downloaded from http://www.riverblade.co.uk/products/visual_lint/downloads/PcLintConfigFiles.zip and contain suppression directives for commonly encountered issues in the Visual C++ header files.

If however you are unable to determine the cause yourself we would be happy to look at your configuration for you and suggest any resultant changes. If you wish to do this, we will need you to send us the following information:

• A copy of your analysis configuration (the std.lnt file etc.)
• A small sample project which illustrates this issue
• Details of the global analysis configuration you are using with Visual Lint (either a dump of the registry configuration from HKCU\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint or screenshots of your options pages).
• Details of any project or solution specific analysis settings you may be using (these are stored in .vloptions files)
• A copy of the status text recorded by Visual Lint in the "Visual Lint Status"  (VS2002/2003/2005/2008) or "Macros" (VS6/eVC4) pane of the Output Window.

What happened to Visual Lint Free Edition?

Visual Lint Free Edition was originally conceived as a way to assist in raising awareness of the full product. Unfortunately it has not worked out in the way we hoped but instead proved to be something of a drain on our resources. Hence Visual Lint Free Edition has now been discontinued as announced on our mailing list several months ago.

How do I change the font used in the Message Lookup Display?

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint\Settings\Displays\Warning Lookup\Font Family
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint\Settings\Displays\Warning Lookup\Font Size

How do I perform a silent installation of Visual Lint?

VisualLintAddInSetup /s LICENCE_USER=<Licenced User> LICENCE_KEY=<Licence Key> /l=<logfile pathname>

VisualLintAddInSetup  /s MODIFY=FALSE REMOVE=TRUE UNINSTALL=YES /l=<logfile pathname>

If you require a customised installation (for example to specify the installation folder or a group policy compatible installer) please contact us.