Products, the Universe and Everything

Visual Lint 2.0.1.98 has been released

The changes in this build include:

Additional include folder specifications delimited by commas (rather than the more usual semicolons) are now handled correctly while generating project.lnt files.

Corrected a bug in the handling of project specific environment variables.

Added an option to the "Visual C++" option page to allow the environment indirect file (env-vc8.lnt etc.) to be specified. By default, Visual Lint will now attempt to use the appropriate file for the host IDE, but if this cannot be located it will select a compatible alternative if possible.

Updated the configuration file (platforms.xml) used for environment variable expansion for embedded platforms (Smartphone/Pocket PC 2003, Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK and Windows Mobile 6 SDK).

The Configuration Wizard now performs a check on the new configuration to ensure that all indirect files it references are available,and not duplicated on the command line. If any errors are located, it will attempt to correct them. Note that this operation occurs silently and does not at present provide any user feedback.

Section links in the HTML report templates now work with Firefox.

The "Issue Count by Category" and "Issue Count By No" views in the Analysis Results Display are now hidden for registered users who do not have access to them (this prevents unwanted elevation prompts which can interfere with keyboard access).

Corrected the valid upgrades for the v2.0 Standard => v2.0 Professional Edition licence certificate to include upgrades from v1.5 => v2.0 Standard Edition upgrade licences.

Added a v1.5 Standard => v2.0 Professional licence upgrade certificate.

Sometimes articles take as long as products to write

The first time we attended the ACCU Conference back in April 2007 I was rather struck by how much I would enjoy writing for that audience. I actually started writing an article (something I've not done in a while due to time pressures) while I was there. If I tell you that I started writing it on a PDA using a stylus, you'll probably have an idea of how enthusiastic I was about it at the time).

After the conference ended the draft sat there for months. Every so often when I had a spare few minutes I'd fire up Pocket Word and write a bit more. By this year's ACCU Conference I was feeling guilty about it, and after being rather heavily "leaned on" to present a session at ACCU 2009, I decided to get a bit more serious about it. As ever, work got in the way (specifically, the development of Visual Lint 2.0) so it wasn't until the summer that I had something I was reasonably happy with.

In late August Gail Ollis wrote to me to tell me she was guest editing the next edition of the ACCU journals CVu and Overload, and asked if I'd be interested in writing a "Visual Studio 101" type article.

That was the kick I needed - and as I had something almost ready, it made sense to submit that rather than write something new. As a result, part 1 of "Taming the Lint Monster" was submitted to the editor for publication this afternoon.

I've reproduced the introduction (entitled "An All Too Common Story") below to give you a flavour of the article:

It's such a common story. Partway through a project, the company starts to become anxious about the number of defects that are being identified in the product, and how long they are taking to fix. Even worse, customers are beginning to notice.

Something must be done. Additional resources are thrown at the problem, but somehow it doesn't ever seem to be enough. The codebase is large, complex and hard to understand and maintain. It is - for all intents and purposes - a "Big Ball of Mud" (not that anyone in the company would know such a term; after all - they are far too busy firefighting to read tech blogs and keep up to date with current trends in software development).

After several months of throwing additional firefighters at the problem, someone has the bright idea? to find out just how much hidden nastiness is lurking in the code base waiting for the right moment to let loose it's wrath on the unsuspecting team.

An appropriate tool is identified and procured, and then the real fun starts - actually using it.

Inevitably, it never quite turns out the way the team (or their managers) expect. Not only does it turn out to be an absolute nightmare to configure and use (after all you never appreciate how much work compiler project files can save you from until you have to maintain something comparable yourself), but when the team do finally get it working to their satisfaction the results it produces are so volumous that nobody quite knows what to do with them. Worse, they contain some really bad news (TM).

As all too often happens, dealing with the issues the tool raises is deemed to be a) too expensive, b) too risky and c) not as much fun as writing new copy-paste code (though nobody is ever quite honest enough to admit to the latter).

The team conveniently forget about the whole experience and go back to compiling at warning level 3 as they always have done. The installation disk for the offending tool is quietly hidden away in a desk draw and forgotten...and of course, the Big Ball of Mud grows ever bigger until the inevitable "lets just re-write it in language 'X'" event a year or two later. With an eye on what language 'X' would look like on everyone's CV, of course...

But it sure did seem like a good idea at the time...

Incidentally, if you are interested in software quality and innovation and haven't joined ACCU, you really should...

Detecting unused include files in C++ projects

Sometimes the time to build or analyse your code can be a real pain. In C++, one of the things that can contribute to this is excessive header file nesting. As such, it is a good idea to take a look at your include file dependencies once in a while. Of course, one of the obvious and low risk things you can do is to remove any #include directives which aren't required.

You may not be aware that PC-Lint can detect unused header files if you configure it correctly. The main PC-Lint message you need to know about is 766 ("Header file not used in module"), but there are also ones for more subtle issues such as 964 ("Header file not directly used in module") and 966 ("Indirectly included header file not used in module").

All are informational, so if you have your warning level turned down to warnings or errors only (for example via -w1 or -w2) you simply won't see them. Of course, if your codebase has not been analysed before or is "noisy" turning up the warning level is likely to result in the issues you are looking for being drowned by others.

Fortunately, there is a simple way to show just the unused header file issues. All you need to do is set the warning level to 0 (which turns off everything!) and enable just the ones you are looking for - in this case only 766. In Visual Lint you can do this by defining custom analysis options -w0 +e766 on the "Command Line" options page:

When you re-analyse the code (use single file analysis, and make sure all projects are set to inherit default custom analysis option settings), the only issues shown now will be those messages you have enabled:

Although I've used Visual Lint to illustrate this, you can also do this directly from the PC-Lint command line. You can also use the same approach to detect any specific issue - so if (for example) you want to detect all of the C style casts used in a C++ codebase you would use -w0 +e1924.

By the way, if you are looking at include dependencies within your code, you really should be aware of Profactor Software's IncludeManager:

Like Visual Lint, it is a Visual Studio add-in. Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 are supported, with Visual Studio 2008 support in beta. Highly recommended.

It's Official - PC-Lint 9.0 is here

If you have visited the Gimpel website over the past few days, you may have noticed some information on PC-Lint 9.0 leaking out. Although we have known about PC-Lint 9.0 for some time (we were one of the beta testers), we were unable to talk about it until the formal release.

Since Gimpel have now made their formal release announcement we are now able to discuss it freely.

We have been running beta versions of PC-Lint 9.0 here for several months now, and I have to say that it is a huge improvement over PC-Lint 8.00. Not only are there a whole bucketful of new messages (146 in fact), but the new version supports much improved variable checking, thread analysis, detection of pointer and reference anomalies and MISRA C++ to name but a handful of the major features. Furthermore, previously undocumented message suppression options such as -etype (which works a treat with boost::shared_ptr<*> and message 1746...) are now fully supported.

Highly recommended.

Referral programme for existing customers

In addition to the additional licences discount programme I described in the previous post, any existing customers who refer potential customers at other locations (regardless of whether within the same company or not) will receive free upgrades to Visual Lint 2.0 for each licence purchased by the referred customer.

There are a couple of simple conditions, of course:

The referrer must write to us giving details (name, organisation, contact email and street address) of the individual or organisation they are referring.

If the referred individual or organisation subsequently purchases Visual Lint licences, the referrer will receive one licence upgrade to the Visual Lint 2.0 edition corresponding to their current Visual Lint 1.0 or 1.5 licences for each licence purchased by the referred organisation or site.

As ever, if you have any queries, please contact us.

10% discounts for additional licences purchased before 30th September

Many customers (including some rather large corporations) buy single Visual Lint licences from us. However, if you are part of a large team, that really doesn't make much sense - for any code analysis tool to have a chance of improving the quality of your codebase you really need the whole team to buy-in to the concept. After all, who wants to be the firefighter in the corner fixing everybody else's mistakes...?

With that in mind, we are offering a 10% discount to any existing customers who wish to purchase additional Visual Lint licences from our online store between now and 30th September. If you are an existing Visual Lint customer who is interested in taking up this offer all you need to do is write to us and we will send you a coupon code you can use during the order process to receive your promotional discount.

Remember that any licences purchased during this period will automatically be upgraded to Visual Lint 2.0 licences when it is formally released, so you will actually be buying Visual Lint 2.0 licences at Visual Lint 1.5 prices.

Visual Lint 2.0 is coming!

It's time we let the cat out of the bag - Visual Lint 2.0 will be released shortly!

There are too many changes to describe in detail, but among those we are most excited about are:

A new product edition - Visual Lint Enterprise Edition

project.lnt

More detailed HTML reports

A new Analysis History Display

Faster loading of large solutions [Visual Lint Professional and Enterprise Editions]

Improved compatibility with the Intel C++ Compiler

Improved compatibility with projects using Visual Studio environment variables and custom command lines

$(OutDir)

New graphical views in the Analysis Results Display

New context menu commands in the Analysis Status Display

Include file dependency tracking

Trial installations allow the user to select which product edition they wish to try

We've collected a selection of screenshots from the new version to give you a flavour of it:

Visual Lint 2.0 is a major release, and as such existing Visual Lint 1.0 or 1.5 licences will need to be upgraded to work with the new version. Prices for upgrades will be published shortly, but we can now reveal that any customers who have purchased Visual Lint 1.5 licences from us directly since 1st July will - at no charge - receive corresponding Visual Lint 2.0 licences prior to the public release (if you purchased via a reseller please contact us and we'll be happy to send the replacement keys directly to you).

Visual Lint 1.5.12.92 has been released

The changes in this version include:

When a whole project analysis task is aborted, the status of the project is now set to "not analysed".

When an issue in the Analysis Results Display is activated (by a double click or one of the "Go to..." commands), the file details within the display are no longer changed if the activated file is an implementation file or its primary header file.

Corrected a focus issue when hosted in Visual C++ 6.0 or eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0.

Fixed a bug in the installer which was preventing the update check wizard from being run correctly.

Currency exchange rates - again!

Anyone who has travelled between the UK (or indeed US) and mainland Europe recently cannot have failed to notice the increasing strength of the Euro relative to other currencies.

That of course is something we need to take into account in our pricing, and as a result we have just adjusted the prices of our licences in line with current exchange rates. The result of this are significant reductions in pricing in Euros, together with a small increase in the pricing in US Dollars.

Our apologies if this causes you any inconvenience.

How to change the font used in the Raw Analysis Results Display

By default, the "Raw Analysis Results" view within the Analysis Results Display attempts to use the font specified in the IDEs toolwindow font settings. If you need to override this for any reason, you can now (in Visual Lint 1.5.11.89 or later) do so by setting the appropriate keys in the registry.

To do this, all you have to do is set the following registry keys to the font name and size (in points) you wish to use:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint\Settings\Displays\Raw Analysis Results\Font Family
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint\Settings\Displays\Raw Analysis Results\Font Size

Visual Lint 1.5.11.89 has been released

The changes in this version include:

Added Goto Previous/Next Location support to the Analysis Results Display. Note that:

This is currently available in VS2002 onwards only, as the keyboard bindings for VC6 and eVC4 are not accessible through the automation interface, and

The presence of other add-ins may affect the functioning of this feature under VS2002 and VS2003 due to a bug (fixed in VS2005) in the Visual Studio automation interfaces. Please refer to MSDN KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555090 for further details.

Pressing the Enter key in the Message Lookup Display is now equivalent to pressing the "Go!" button.

Added direct support for the $(SolutionDir) and $(ProjectDir) macros to the project.lnt file writer in order to overcome a bug in the VS2008 automation interfaces.

The $(ConfigurationName) macro is now handled directly when reading the intermediate files folder. This change is only required to support VS2008, which is unreliable when it comes to expanding Visual Studio environment variables via its automation interfaces.

The UseAutoGeneratedProjectLntFile project property is now saved into the solution options file correctly [Visual Lint Professional Edition].

Fixed a bug in the Analysis Options page which was preventing the indirect file ordering option from being applied correctly in Visual Lint Standard Edition.

Corrected a bug in the resolution of relative paths within .vsprops files.

Corrected a bug in the generation of HTML reports.

Fixed a validation bug in the Configuration Wizard.

The title and registration text in the About Box is now highlighted in colour.

Added registry keys to allow the font used for raw analysis results to be set independently of the IDE "Text Output Tool Windows" setting. The keys in question are: HKCU\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint\Settings\Displays\Raw Analysis Results\Font Family and HKCU\Software\Riverblade\Visual Lint\Settings\Displays\Raw Analysis Results\Font Size.

Visual Lint Free Edition is now licenced for non-commercial use only. Updated the licence terms, installer, About Box and licencing prompts accordingly.

When a trial installation is activated, a "thank you for trying Visual Lint" page is now displayed offering additional information and support. A similar page is displayed when a trial installation expires.

When a trial installation is uninstalled a feedback request page is now displayed.

Corrected the icons installed in the start menu for update checks and scheduling.

Update checks initiated from the start menu are no longer silent.

Removed the unnecessary balloon tip shown when updates are scheduled in the installer.

Cut Price Proliants

Last October we bought a new build server (an HP Proliant ML110 G4 with dual core 1.86GHz Xeon) from Ebuyer. It's not exactly high end, but was stunningly cheap - as far as we were concerned a price of £190 for a branded server in the UK was quite simply incredible. Even now, it is not uncommon to see the same units priced at £500 or more.

After adding a couple of GB more RAM and installing Windows Server 2003 (we have found that server operating systems are far faster than a desktop OS in such a role) we had a machine which was ideally suited for use as a build server. Ours sits there happily churning through CruiseControl.NET builds all day.

Now we thought that was cheap, so imagine our reaction when we saw this the other day:

Needless to say, we now have a pair of new 2.2GHz dual core Opteron servers waiting for deployment...

Site host move

We are now in the process of moving our website (which includes our long overdue new site design) to a new host.

While we are waiting for the name server change to propagate across the internet it is entirely possible that the site may be down for some for a few hours during the transition.

Please bear with us while we work our way through this process - the new site should be fully functional some time tomorrow.

Update: Everything seems to be stabilising now. If you spot any broken links or other oddities anywhere on the new site, please let us know and we'll do our best to address them as quickly as possible.