Cppcheck - C/C++ Code Analysis Tool

[jussij]

Cppcheck is a tool for C/C++ code analysis: https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io/

Installation
To install the software, download and run the Windows 64-bit installer found on that page.

Thie installer requires admin rights as it installs to the following folder location:

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C:\Program Files\Cppcheck

The installer does not add the installation folder to the system PATH so this will need to be done as a seperate user step as described here: viewtopic.php?t=6176

Cppcheck User Manual
The user manual for this tool can be found here: https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io/manual.pdf

Zeus Integration
To use cppcheck from inside Zeus, use the Options, Document Types menu to edit the C/C++ Document Type and inside the Tools panel add new tool using the details shown below:

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Cppcheck '$f' File
cppcheck.exe
--platform=win64  "$fn" 
$fdd

This will create a new C/C++ specific tool as shown below:

cppcheck.png (134.01 KiB) Viewed 26838 times

Testing the Cppcheck Tool
To test the newly created tool, save the following code to an example.cpp file:

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int main()
{
  char a[10];
  a[10] = 0;
  return 0;
}

With that file open in Zeus the Tools menu will now show the cppcheck option in the menu as shown below:

cppcheck-menu.png (40.11 KiB) Viewed 26838 times

Running that tool will then result in the following output, highlighting the error in the code:

cppcheck-err.png (37.96 KiB) Viewed 26838 times

Cheers Jussi

[jussij]

The cppcheck utitlity can be used to test projects and solutions using command lines that take those details as shown below:

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cppcheck --project="foo.vcxproj"
cppcheck --project="bar.sln"

One issue this can cause is when the project code contains an #error directive, for example code similar to this:

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// Release mode dynamic link multi-threaded dll C-runtime
#if !defined(_MT) || !defined(_DLL)
    #error The /MDd compiler switch is required.
#endif

Running cppcheck on that code can result in the following error:

cppcheck-defines.png (45.27 KiB) Viewed 26821 times

The issue here is because those preprocessor values are not defined the #error is triggered and the cppcheck aborts any further checks.

To fix this the -D command line option can be used to define these preprocessor values as shown below:

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cppcheck -D_DLL -D_MT --project="foo.vcxproj"
cppcheck -D_DLL -D_MT --project="bar.sln"

Jussi