Cppcheck-2.0

Overview

The command line is not changed drastically. Your old cppcheck scripts should work as before.

Compiling: There is a new dependency Z3. When compiling with the Makefile it is highly recommended to use "USE_Z3=yes".

Improved clang-tidy integration

Several fixes to;

• improve parsing
• detect more bugs with existing checks
• fix false alarms

Clang import

Clang is a C/C++ compiler that has a very robust and well made parser.

Cppcheck will always use its internal parser by default. However there is now an option to use the Clang parser instead.

It is recommended that you use the default internal Cppcheck parser unless you notice that it fails to parse your code properly (syntax errors, strange false alarms).

Bug hunting

There is a new "soundy" analysis in Cppcheck that should detect most bugs. You should expect false alarms, however the false alarms will not be overwhelming.

This new "soundy" analysis is not intended to replace normal Cppcheck analysis. There are use cases where false alarms can not be tolerated.

We have added 1 checker and that checks for division by zero:

• It detects all "integer division by zero" bugs in the Juliet test suite.
• It detects all "division by zero" bugs in the ITC test suite.
• There was 28 division by zero CVEs published in 2019 for C/C++ open source projects, and we could quickly see that 21 of the bugs are found by Cppcheck. There is no CVE bug that we know Cppcheck fails to diagnose. But there are 7 CVEs that would require additional investigation to establish if it is really detected or not.

You can read more about this analysis in the "Bug hunting" chapter in the manual.

Cppcheck-1.90

New check:

• alias to vector element invalid after vector is changed

Improved checking:

• improved value flow analysis for struct members
• improved value flow analysis for pointer alias

CERT:

• Added ENV33-C: Do not call system()

MISRA:

• Added rule 2.7
• Added rule 3.2
• Added rule 4.2
• Added rule 14.2
• Added rule 21.1
• Added rule 21.12

Cppcheck-1.89

Command line:

• The default warning message format was changed. The new format is similar to GCC. If you want to get warnings in the old format, add --template=cppcheck1 to the command line.

Compiling:

• From now on, use FILESDIR instead of CFGDIR to specify the path for Cppcheck data files. The readme.txt describes the available flags.

Improved checking:

• improved value flow analysis for pointer aliases
• improved checking for uninitialized variables/structs
• better checking of smart pointers
• better checking of global variables
• Added Cppcheck annotations cppcheck_low(VALUE) and cppcheck_high(VALUE)
• shadow variables; warn when argument is shadowed
• warn if local reference variable can be const

CERT:

• Added API01-C: Avoid laying out strings in memory directly before sensitive data
• Added MSC24-C: Do not use deprecated or obsolescent functions
• Added STR11-C: Do not specify the bound of a character array initialized with a string literal

MISRA:

• Added rule 17.2
• Added rule 18.4
• Added rule 18.7

GUI:

• Minor tweaks

Cppcheck-1.88

New checks:

• Comparing pointers that point to different objects
• Address of local variable 'x' is accessed at non-zero index
• STL usage: unnecessary search before insertion
• Duplicate expression for condition and assignment: if (x==3) x=3;

Added --library configuration files for:

• cppunit
• libcerror
• nspr
• opengl
• sqlite3

Better handling of C++14 and C++17

Command line:

• New command line option --addon used to run addons directly from Cppcheck.
• Some advanced options are only available in GUI:
  • remove unused declarations in header files to speedup analysis
  • remove unused templates to speedup analysis
  • when checking visual studio project, only check 1 configuration
  • max whole-program-analysis call stack depth
    To get these features in command line tool, create a GUI project file and import that on command line using --project.

GUI:

• started implementing theme support

Makefile:
Please use MATCHCOMPILER=yes instead of SRCDIR=build when compiling to enable the match compiler.

Cert:

• add check exp15-c
• add check str03-c
• add check str05-c
• add check str07-c

Misra:

• Add check 17.7
• Add check 20.7
• Add check 20.10

Cppcheck-1.87

Command line interface:

• --project can now import Cppcheck GUI projects.

New checks:

• Condition is always true when array address is compared with 0.
• function argument expression calculation has known result (#8830)

Improvements:

• Better lifetime checking (using pointer/reference that points at deleted object)
• Improved whole program analysis
• Better handling of language extension var@address.
• Many improvements in parser to handle templates, type aliases, etc better

Configuration:

• new configuration for boost
• much better wxwidgets configuration

Addons:

• New addon for checking naming conventions. Naming conventions are configured in json file.

Performance:
According to daca@home Cppcheck-1.87 is in average 10% faster than Cppcheck-1.86.

Cppcheck-1.86

General:

• Many fixes in the template simplifier
• Several fixes in the abstract syntax tree.

Checking improvements:

• New check: passing address of char to function that expects a strz
• New check: shadow variables
• Improved lifetime checking
• Improved STL iterators checking
• Improved data flow analysis

New libraries:

• zlib
• googletest

Addons:

• misra.py: Fixes for suppressions and exclusions
• namingng.py: New addon to check naming conventions. Rules are specified in json file.

Cppcheck-1.85

General:

• We are modernizing the Cppcheck code. Support for MSVC 2010 and GCC 4.4 is dropped. You now need a compiler that is at least as good as MSVC 2013 or GCC 4.6.
• According to "daca@home" (http://cppcheck.osuosl.org:8000)
  • There are fewer crashes.
  • Cppcheck-1.85 is ~25% slower than Cppcheck-1.84

Checking improvements:

• New check: Suggest STL algorithms instead of hard-coded for loops
• New check: Warn about ineffective algorithms (same iterator passed)
• New check: Mismatching iterators used together in operators
• Container (STL/Qt/WxWidgets/etc) access out of bounds
• Improved the checkers that warns about same/opposite expressions, track variable values better.
  • logical conjunctions
  • identical/opposite inner expressions
  • same expressions around operator
  • etc
• Variable scope: warn about references also

Graphical user interface:

• You can specify undefines in the project file dialog
• Fixed configuration of suppressions
• Windows: Fixed issue of wrong/no theme being applied to UI elements

Misra:

• support per file excludes from cppcheck
• support per file suppressions from cppcheck
• summary will now summarize results for all files again
• a few false positives were fixed

Cppcheck-1.84

New checks:

• Same rhs expression used in consecutive assignments
• Added more misra checkers
• Function overrides base class function but is not marked with the override keyword

Improved checks:

• Identical inner condition
• Opposite expressions
• Call to virtual function in constructor or destructor
• Variable not initialized by private constructor
• A class that has dynamic allocation needs copy constructor, assignment operator and destructor

Misc:

• Various performance optimisations
• Better support for C++17
• --template=gcc format has been updated to match gcc output better.
• We added a --template-location that can be used to format multiline messages.
• Update --template so the piece of code with the warning can be shown
• Symbol-based suppressions
• XML based suppressions format

Addons:

• cert.py: Attempting to cast away const
• misc.py: String concatenation in array initialization
• misc.py: Passing struct to ellipsis function
• misc.py: Function overrides base class function but is not marked with the virtual keyword

Compiling: We dropped support for some old compilers. From now on you need gcc 4.6 or later / visual studio 2013 or later / other compiler with c++11 support.

1.83

Command line:

• fixes in parser
• Improved loading of platform files.

GUI:

• few minor improvements in user interface
• Code preview
• Added MISRA addon integration
• Platform can be selected in project settings
• Fixed issue when loading xml results file

Addons:

• We are now officially releasing our MISRA addon. So far it supports MISRA C 2012.

1.82

Bug fixes:

• Better handling of namespaces
• Fixed false positives
• Fixed parsing of compile databases
• Fixed parsing of visual studio projects

Enhancements

• New check; Detect mistakes when there are multiple strcmp() in condition
  Example:

  if (strcmp(password,"A")==0 || strcmp(password,"B")==0 || strcmp(password,"C"))
  

  There is a missing '==0', and therefore this condition is always true except when password is "C".

• New check; pointer calculation result can't be NULL unless there is overflow
  Example:

  someType **list_p = ...;
  if ((list_p + 1) == NULL)
  

  The result for '(list_p + 1)' can't be NULL unless there is overflow (UB).

• New check; public interface of classes should be safe - detect possible division by zero
  Example:

  class Fred {
  public:
  void setValue(int mul, int div) {
    value = mul / div; // <- unsafe
  }
  ...
  

  This check does not consider how Fred::setValue() is really called.
  If you agree that the public interface of classes should always be safe; it should be allowed to call all public methods with arbitrary arguments, then this checker will be useful.

• Fixed a few false negatives

• More information in the cfg files