On Sat, Jan 07, 2012, Lars wrote: > What tools are used in OpenBSD for static source code analysis? I guess > Lint is considered one tool? Do you, Ted, use other tools than Lint? > This post is not just meant to be sent for Ted, of course anyone else > could reply if they know about source code analysis. > > Should some of these static source code analysis techniques be merged into > compilers to catch more errors right within the development process, > instead of it being a separate tool?
I haven't really done much with static analysis for a while. It's much easier to just write perfect code the first time. :) More seriously, I think that attitude is somewhat of an impediment because people are highly suspicious of tools they don't understand. Whether the analysis should be integrated in the compiler is just a matter of definition. A strongly typed language like ocaml does lots of checking in the compiler because the language mandates it. The combination of a C compiler and analysis tool could very well be considered a compiler for BetterC. The grand master plan at Coverity was to integrate the tool into the development process, but it doesn't need to be integrated into the compiler any more than make and the linker need to be all one program.
