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SAS Static Analysis Suite

Static analysis of your code and check of coding conventions: easier than ever

SA_PLUGIN=$SASBUILDDIR/lib/libSas.so SA_FORMATTING=1 SA_CHECKERS="sas.threadsafety" clang++ ... -c myFile.cpp ....
  • Easy to build
  • Easy to integrate in your CI system
  • Easy to extend
  • Free and open-source

Introduction

The Static Analysis Suite (SAS) allows to easily create checkers for static analysis with clang. This is achieved creating a plugin (dynamic shared object library), loadable by the compiler. SAS is shipped with a set of custom checkers and allows easy extension with new checkers. See Credit and History

How to build and use the SAS plugin

Clone the SAS repository and then:

export SASBUILDDIR=SASbuild
mkdir $SASBUILDDIR;cd $SASBUILDDIR
cmake ../SAS
make -j 4

Having performed these steps, you should have the library ready in "$SASBUILDDIR/lib/libSas.so".

There are two ways of using the plugin: directly with clang and in combination with scan-build

With Clang

You can invoke the static analyzer with your own checkers with this command:

clang++ <all the options to compile the unit>  -Xclang -analyze -Xclang -analyzer-output=text -Xclang -load -Xclang $SASBUILDDIR/lib/libSas.so -Xclang -analyzer-checker=MyAnalyzer1 -Xclang -analyzer-checker=MyAnalyzer2 ... -analyzer-checker=MyAnalyzerN

Scan-build

To invoke scan-build prepended to make, a possible command could be:

scan-build -load-plugin $BUILD_DIR/lib/libSas.so -enable-checker sas \
           -disable-checker sas.example -disable-checker sas.optional \
           -o MyReportDir make

Combining static analysis and formatting rules checking

Many projects often require to impose coding conventions. This can be achieved using SAS. Rules that require an AST analysis can be implemented as clang checkers while rules relative to formatting can be checked with clang-format. SAS takes care of the gory details and offers some script to ease this job.

  1. sasFormattingChecker.py: this script allows to check the formatting of a file and emit warning is formatting rules are violated
  2. clang++ and clang: these two scripts are meant to be a wrapper around the compiler

Steering static analysis with environment variables: the clang and clang++ scripts

This is a bit experimental at the moment, but basically all you need to check your code are these two scripts. You can use them like this. Just forward the commands to clang(++)

clang++ ... -c myFile.cpp ....

Forward the commands to the compiler and check formatting

SA_FORMATTING=1 clang++ ... -c myFile.cpp ....

Forward the commands to the compiler, check formatting and select some checkers

SA_FORMATTING=1 SA_CHECKERS="core.uninitialized:alpha" clang++ ... -c myFile.cpp ....

Forward the commands to the compiler, check formatting, load a plugin (why not the SAS one?) and select some checkers

SA_PLUGIN=$SASBUILDDIR/lib/libSas.so SA_FORMATTING=1 SA_CHECKERS="sas.threadsafety" clang++ ... -c myFile.cpp ....

Requirements

To start using SAS, you need cmake (at least version 2.6), clang, llvm and their development files. The required version for Clang is 3.5.

Details about the implementation

You can find the source code of the existing SAS checkers in the files *src/*Checker.**. Feel free to inspect the source code to get basic understanding of how checkers are implemented. Note that VarnameChecker and GlobalAccInCtorChecker are expected to have more comprehensive documentation. Please consult the [Checker Developer Manual] for more information about checker development. Useful links:

Registration in SAS plugin

Once you've created a new checker class, you need to register it in the SAS library. To do that, edit the files src/ClangSasCheckerPluginRegister.cpp and CMakeLists.txt. The comments in the files explain the steps to be taken in order to add a checker to the library. After this step is performed, configure SAS build again with cmake to propagate the changes in the build files and re-build SAS.

How to disable a checker from within the source code (experimental)

A checker disabling mechanism is provided for suppressing false positives. To disable a checker on a particular line in target source code, add a comment on a preceding line that starts with "//" (two slashes) and contains the following text:

sas[disable_checker : "MyChecker"]

(including the double quotes) where MyChecker is a full name of the checker to be disabled.

Example (source code extract):

// sas[disable_checker : "sas.example.Varname"]
int varLowercase; // not bug (Varname): lowercase, but disabled by comment

For more examples see the file test/checkerdisabler.cpp.

How to allow a checker to be disabled

Consult the file src/CheckerDisabler.h for instructions on how to disable your checker.

Credit and History

SAS originates from an effort within the CMS collaboration at CERN and quite some checkers were imported from CMSSW (http://cms-sw.github.io/). CMSSSW and its authors cannot be blamed by any mistake or bug present in SAS :-) The credit of single developers is preserved within the single source files. The first version of SAS was created by F. Bartek, D. Piparo and T. Hauth.

Useful Links:

Licence

SAS is licenced under LGPL3.