Incremental source code analysis for C/C++ languages

Abstract

The article describes a way of implementing static code analysis for C/C++ languages that allows to reduce dramatically the time of the second and following analysis iterations. Main idea behind algorithm based on fact that programs on C/C++ languages widely use common parts of code placed inside header files with declarations and such header files included inside of several compilation units of projects. The ratio of the number of tokens in the source file to the number of tokens in the included headers is small. It is possible to reduce time of analysis using cache of compilation results for rarely changed part of compilation unit and use it in following iterations of analysis during work inside modern IDEs. The method is implemented in a commercial product for MS Visual Studio. The result of implementation described method is reduced more that in ten times time needed to analyze changed source code. Such performance improvement allows to re-analyze code on every changed symbol inside IDE and issue defects found in source code on-the-fly while developer creates program. This method is implemented inside of product Klocwork inSight 9.5

Keywords

• статический анализа кода
• повторный поиск дефектов
• с\с++