Static-code analyzer: unmanged C++ Visual Studio 2008

Question

I develop commercial unmanaged C++ app on Visual Studio 2008, and I want to add a static-code analysis tool.

Any recommendations?

I think it would be real nice if the tool can be integrated into MSVC.

I'm thinking about PC-Lint + Visual Lint

However, I have been taking a hard look at Coverity, Understand, and Klockwork as well.

Price isnt really the issue. I want opinions from people who actually used the tool for unmanaged C++ on MSVC, and they just absolutely loved it.

Lastly, VSTS and Intel Parallel Studio now also offer static code analysis. Nice~

Note: related post suggest Coverity is the best (?) (see last 2 posts)

Answer 1

Beyond all those you mentioned, VS Team Developer edition comes bundled with a nice static analysis tool called prefast. Its (obviously..) well integrated into the IDE, and accessible via the menus. Its in fact a public release of an MS internal tool - a thin version of a tool called Prefix they run on their builds. Personally, when I faced the same decision, prefast sufficed.

Answer 2

I just started using cppcheck which I like very much due to the low noise. Although it does not integrate directly with VS2008, VS can be customized and you should be able to integrate it directly into the IDE.

Answer 3

I work for RedLizard building Goanna, a C++ static analysis plugin for Visual Studio. Its focus is on desktop use by a programmer. You can run it on individual files, just as you do the compiler, and it can give you results quickly.

There is a trial available. Right-click a file, select Run Goanna, and the results appear in the Visual Studio warnings list.

Answer 4

CppDepend could be useful for this needs, it provides a Visual Studio plugin,and a CQL language to query the code base like SQL, for example you can execute requests like:

WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TOP 10 METHODS WHERE CyclomaticComplexity > 20 ORDER BY CyclomaticComplexity DESC

CppDepend provides also many useful views; like Dependency graph, matrix graph and metric view