Introduction to Static Analysis

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Title

Introduction to Static Analysis

Overview

Participants write a unit test (in Google Test) and corresponding C++ code to pass the test to verify the test passes.

Prerequisites

Google Test needed to have been installed (as instructed in Unit Test With GoogleTest Activity) and intermediate C++ expertise.

Learning
Objectives
After successfully completing this activity, the learner should be able to:
  • Follow "Red light, green light" Test-Driven Development process and reflect over the approach.
Process Skills
Practiced


Directions

Students

  • In this exercise, we will set up and start exploring a static analysis tool packaged with the Clang compiler.
Downloading Clang and dependencies

For OSX

  • You already have Clang and all the other dependencies installed. However, you need to install the Static Analyzer by downloading the packaged build of checker here.
  • After fully downloaded, I recommend then extracting the files from the tarball (checker-278.tar.bz2) as a new directory in your /usr/local folder, such as /usr/local/checker
  • If you are using sh, ksh, or bash shell, type the command: export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/checker-278/bin but replace /usr/local/checker-278/bin with the location of where the static analyzer was installed, followed by /bin since that is where the binary (executable) files are

For *nix

Running scan-build
  • Navigate to where you stored (or freshly clone) your ConnectX code
  • To start with a fresh build, first make clean
  • Run: scan-build make
  • If you get a command not found error, your PATH is not correctly set (see instructions above).
  • Once run, it should take a moment to analyze the code. Does it identify any bugs? What does the scan-build output results means?
Exploring bug types
  • Navigate to your Minefield project or make a new clone of the github repo so you have it locally
  • Run scan-build on the Minefield project and confirm that it has no bugs found
  • Read over the different checks that the scan-build static analyzer available checks.
  • Within the Field class, try to create a bug as described by one of the available checks. However, don't just use the example code the documentation provides. Instead, try to incorporate one of those types of errors into the Field.cpp file so that if someone else looked at the code they might not immediately recognize the bug. Try to make a bug but "hide" it in a clever way.
  • Once you've created a "hidden bug," run scan-build on the project and make sure it identifies the bug that you think it should.

Deliverables

A revised C++ class with a bug injected into it

Assessment

The bug the student created should force a static analysis message if run again

Additional Information:

ACM BoK
Area & Unit(s)

Software Engineering / SE Static Analysis

ACM BoK
Topic(s)

Static Analysis

Difficulty

Understanding types of static analysis messages and creating a new bug requires intermediate programming expertise

Estimated Time
to Complete

Installation may take up to 30 minutes for computers running *nix operating systems and is suggested to assign for homework before class. The rest of the activity should take 15-30 minutes, not counting discussion.

Environment /
Materials

Need to have a working C++ development environment

Author(s)

Kevin Buffardi

Source

Kevin Buffardi

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

CC license.png

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