Visual Lint Integrated Lint Analysis for Microsoft Visual Studio and eMbedded Visual C++ Close integration of the industry standard PC-Lint code analysis tool within your development environment   Simple configuration   No need to learn complex PC-Lint command lines   Automated background analysis of complete solutions and workspaces while you edit   Easy to interpret displays of analysis results, colour coded by severity   Supports both single file ("unit checkout") and whole project automated analysis   Customisable HTML and XML reports   Registered editions available from only £79 ($149 USD)   Compatible with Microsoft Visual Studio 2002, 2003, 2005, 2008, Visual C++ 6.0 and eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0

     

Introduction

Visual Lint is an add-in for Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Studio which closely integrates the Gimpel PC-Lint static code analysis tool within the Visual Studio integrated development environment.

PC-Lint analyses C++ code to identify potential problems. By comparison with a C++ compiler such as that provided with Visual C++, it is highly customisable and very thorough, but (understandably) significantly slower.

The output it produces is file based and directed to the console by default, for example:

 
--- Module: CJFlatHeaderCtrl.cpp
}
CJFlatHeaderCtrl.cpp(160): error 1401: (Warning -- member 'CCJFlatHeaderCtrl::m_bSortAsc'
(line 146, file ..\Include\CJFlatHeaderCtrl.h) not initialized by constructor)
 
}
CJFlatHeaderCtrl.cpp(166): error 1740: (Info -- pointer member'CCJFlatHeaderCtrl::m_pParentWnd'
(line 150, file ..\Include\CJFlatHeaderCtrl.h) not directly freed or zero'ed by destructor
-- Effective C++ #6)
 
--- Global Wrap-up
error 900: (Note -- Successful completion, 2 messages produced)

Although PC-Lint does a great job of analysing C++ source and header files for potential problems, it is a generic cross-platform tool and as such its integration with development environments is limited. For example, when used with Visual C++ PC-Lint can be used (usually via a custom command on the Tools menu) to scan the current file for warnings and direct the results to the Output Window, or to scan a list of files defined in a text file.

While this level of integration is perfectly adequate under some scenarios (for example when developing new classes), it is less than ideal if you want to perform a complete analysis of an entire project or solution. Furthermore, since PC-Lint does not provide any means of generating useful reports on the results it can be difficult to spot potential problems amongst the mass of results.

If you are working with a large project these limitations can make using PC-Lint to analyse your code time consuming and difficult, which can potentially this can be a real disincentive to using this very useful tool on a regular basis.

As a result, the quality of your code could well suffer.

Introducing Visual Lint

Riverblade's LintProject command line tool was of course written with these issues in mind. However, even with its assistance it is all too easy to put off dealing with the warnings it generates because the sheer volume can be overwhelming. This can be a particular issue when PC-Lint is used to analyse an existing codebase for the first time.

While static analysis results such as those produced by LintProject are useful, they are of limited use while working on the code itself. In particular, the developer's common expectation of being able to double click on a warning message to see the code isn't available with such results, and there is no way to prioritise addressing the warnings identified.

Visual Lint is a Visual Studio and Visual C++ add-in which aims to overcome this by closely integrating the Lint analysis process within the Visual Studio integrated development environment and making analysis results available to the developer in a form which is both useful and intuitive. This makes it easier for developers to act on the warnings identified – or (looking at it another way) harder for them to ignore them. Either way, one of the common obstacles to making full use of the analysis capability of PC-Lint is removed.

One key issue which Visual Lint addresses is speed. PC-Lint is significantly slower than a C++ compiler (which is not surprising given it’s thoroughness) and a complete analysis of a large solution can take literally hours. Whilst this is a significant issue for a tool such as LintProject, an add-in can take advantage of the fact that a solution is typically loaded within the development environment for long periods of time - during most of which it is sitting idle with files open for editing (although compilation is a computationally intensive task, editing code is not!).

That time can of course be used - with the judicious use of threading and prioritisation - to perform background analysis of the code. Better still, the rich extensibility interface of Visual Studio provides add-ins with the opportunity to present information in a familiar form which is closely integrated with the environment.

LintProject and Visual Lint are intended to complement each other. While LintProject is a static analysis tool suited to analysing a "snapshot" of a solution (possibly as a validation exercise) Visual Lint is designed to assist developers directly while they work on the code.

Product Brief (PDF)

Pricing

Visual Lint Free Edition may be used at no cost.

For detailed pricing details for Visual Lint Standard and Professional Editions, please visit our Online store.

Updates

If you wish to be kept informed of new releases and any relevant information, please consider joining the LintProject/Visual Lint Mailing List.

We are continuing to develop Visual Lint further, and encourage you to contact us if you would like to make suggestions about the features it should include or any other changes you would like to see.