CXX Plugin

Description / Features

This plugin adds basic support of C++ language into Sonar.

Current feature list:

• Basic size metrics:
  
  • Files (number of)
  • Lines
  • Lines of comments
  • Lines of code
  • Lines of commented out code
• Static code checking via Cppcheck, RATS and Vera++
• Dynamic checking for memory management problems via Valgrind
• Cyclomatic (McCabe) complexity metrics including: 
  
  • Projects complexity
  • Average function/method complexity
  • Average file complexity
  • Complexity distributions
• Code coverage metrics including:
  
  • Line coverage
  • Branch coverage
  • An aggregated coverage measure
  • (>0.2 SNAPSHOT) IT line coverage
  • (>0.2 SNAPSHOT) IT branch coverage
• Unit test execution metrics including:
  
  • Successfully executed tests
  • Failed tests
  • Skipped tests
  • Execution time
• Recognition of code duplication
• Basic highlighting mode for C++ in Sonar UI

Dependencies

The Cxx-Plugin has an obligatory dependency on Java (of course... the plugin itself and all runners are Java programs).

Moreover, there are optional dependencies on:

• Various external code analyzers:
  • Cppcheck. Detects a wide range of problems ranging from performance issues and resource leakage to undefined behaviour. Binary packets are available on/for various platforms. Using the latest release pays off in general; compile from source if in doubt.
  • RATS. Detects (potential) security problems in code, sensible for code bases with increased security requirements. Use binary packages or compile from source.
  • Vera++. Focuses on code style issues. There's a binary package for Windows, users of other platforms are likely to compile themselves.
  • Valgrind (memcheck). Detects various memory management problems at runtime. Basically Linux only; just use the packages from your distribution.
  • CppNcss. Provides cyclomatic (McCabe) complexity measures. This is a Java program distributed as a zip archive. Just unpack and make sure the "bin" directory is in PATH.
• GCC, gcov, gcovr and Python for coverage determination. Install Python and place the script somewhere on the PATH.
    

Installation

1. Copy the jar-archive into <sonar home>/extensions/plugins/ directory
2. Restart the Sonar web server

Configuration

Cxx plugin uses the following properties during analysis. See here for the ways how to pass them to the plugin.

Usage

You can analyze your projects using the usual means (see this page for all available). All runners should work. See below for details how to do it for maven-, ant-, and all-the-other-projects.

Maven projects

Doing sonar analysis on maven projects is quite simple and usually a matter of:

• Getting and installing the cxx-maven-plugin (usage).
  
  • if you use multiple source directory and depends on cxx:addsource goal, you shall use -Dsonar.phase=cxx:addsource option (see Sonar Maven Plugin Advanced Parameters)
• Setting the language-property and the source directory in your pom:

   

  <properties>
    ...
    <sonar.language>c++</sonar.language>
    ...
  </properties>
   
  <build>
    ...
    <sourceDirectory> path </sourceDirectory>
    ...
  </build>

• Make sure sonar-server is running

• Start the analysis with "mvn sonar:sonar" or "mvn sonar:sonar -Dsonar.phase=cxx:addsource"

For details see the first sample project.

Ant projects

TODO

Project using miscellaneous build systems

Outside of the maven world the process of integration of a sonar analysis into your project is usually less straightforward but also more flexible. The rough pattern should remain the same independent of the environment:

1. Run the analyzers which are of interest for you and store the results in a file somewhere underneatch the root directory of your project. Its usually convenient to put this into the build system; a shell script may be a good choice, too.

2. Use the sonar-runner to trigger the Cxx plugin which parses the result files and feeds the data into sonar. The sonar runner requires some data to proceed which is usually provided via the "sonar-project.properties"-file in the projects root directory.

There may be a Step '0' too: "use your build system to make a build suitable for running the Step 1". This may be the case for collecting coverage statistict when using gcc+gcov, for example.

For details how to invoke the tools and tie it all together see the second sample project.

External report generation

Here is a quick guide how to generate the reports using external tools

cppcheck

Make sure to pass all include directories as otherwise the analysis will be incomplete. Caveat: cppcheck writes the output to the standard error.

cppncss

You may also use -D and -M options to tell cppncss about preprocessor macros.

Coverage

Cobertura and Bullseye (http://www.bullseye.com/) xml formats are supported for > 0.2 versions. Previous versions support only Cobertura, and sonar.cxx.gcovr.reportPath needs to be set.

Gcov / gcovr

1. 1. Make sure to compile and link with the --coverage-flag. Disable optimizations and switch on debugging.
   2. Execute your application / your tests. This will generate .gcda-files.
   3. Collect the coverage information and generate the report using gcovr:

Bullseye

Bullseye coverage tool is now supported, the bullseye covxml command can be used to create a valid xml for sonar cxx plugin. 

Valgrind

Just tell valgrind to generate XML output. The 'tool' option isn't necessary as 'memcheck' is the default one.

Vera++

The generation of vera++ reports is somewhat more tricky. We find all the files we want to be analysed, pipe this list into vera++ and pipe its output into a Perl script which finally generates the required XML. 

RATS

Known limitations

• • The coverage statistics are only available with GNU C compiler.
  • Some analyzers (RATS, most notably) may have issues and crash occasionally.
  • Valgrind is only available on a subset of UNIX platforms.

Changelog

Roadmap

Following items are in the queue (more or less...):

• • Integrate a lexer/parser infrastructure. Already done in a feature branch, has to be merged to trunk.
  • Integrate compiler warnings
  • Implement the dependency analysis (package tangle index metric)

  • Reimplement the complexity analyzer sensor based on the AST traversal and get rid of the cppncss dependency

  • Reimplement the tokenizer used by the CPD engine based on the built-in parsing infrastructure and remove the PMD-dependency