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[clang-tidy] Add a flag to enable debug checkers
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Authored by lebedev.ri on Apr 27 2018, 6:51 AM.

Details

Summary

After D46159 was created by @pfultz2, and i initially thought it was already possible, i had the need to view the call graph.
I have almost wrote the clang-tidy check for that, but then i remembered of clang-analyzer-debug.ViewCallGraph.
Naturally, it did not work out-of-the-box, thus this patch.

Diff Detail

Event Timeline

lebedev.ri created this revision.Apr 27 2018, 6:51 AM
alexfh requested changes to this revision.May 8 2018, 5:18 AM

I don't think debug CSA checkers belong to clang-tidy. If one needs to dump CFG, they are probably doing quite involved stuff already, so going a step further and running clang -cc1 -analyze would not be difficult. The motivation for exposing alpha checkers (letting users test them and provide feedback) doesn't work for debug checkers.

This revision now requires changes to proceed.May 8 2018, 5:18 AM

I don't think debug CSA checkers belong to clang-tidy. If one needs to dump CFG, they are probably doing quite involved stuff already, so going a step further and running clang -cc1 -analyze would not be difficult. The motivation for exposing alpha checkers (letting users test them and provide feedback) doesn't work for debug checkers.

There is word play here.
They are debug CSA checkers. But not all of them are debugging the CSA. Many of them are just utility checkers that could be just as easily a clang-tidy debug/utility checkers:

$ scan-build -h | grep "   debug."
   debug.AnalysisOrder             Print callbacks that are called during analysis in order       <- for CSA debugging
   debug.ConfigDumper              Dump config table                                              <- for CSA debugging
   debug.DumpCFG                   Display Control-Flow Graphs                                    <- 
   debug.DumpCallGraph             Display Call Graph                                             <- 
   debug.DumpCalls                 Print calls as they are traversed by the engine                <- for CSA debugging
   debug.DumpDominators            Print the dominance tree for a given CFG                       <- 
   debug.DumpLiveVars              Print results of live variable analysis                        <- 
   debug.DumpTraversal             Print branch conditions as they are traversed by the engine    <- for CSA debugging
   debug.ExprInspection            Check the analyzer's understanding of expressions              <- for CSA debugging
   debug.Stats                     Emit warnings with analyzer statistics                         <- for CSA debugging
   debug.TaintTest                 Mark tainted symbols as such.                                  <- for CSA debugging
   debug.ViewCFG                   View Control-Flow Graphs using GraphViz                        <- 
   debug.ViewCallGraph             View Call Graph using GraphViz                                 <- 
   debug.ViewExplodedGraph         View Exploded Graphs using GraphViz                            <- 

(CC people from D46187: @dcoughlin @george.karpenkov @NoQ)

alexfh added a comment.May 8 2018, 6:56 AM

I don't think debug CSA checkers belong to clang-tidy. If one needs to dump CFG, they are probably doing quite involved stuff already, so going a step further and running clang -cc1 -analyze would not be difficult. The motivation for exposing alpha checkers (letting users test them and provide feedback) doesn't work for debug checkers.

There is word play here.
They are debug CSA checkers. But not all of them are debugging the CSA. Many of them are just utility checkers that could be just as easily a clang-tidy debug/utility checkers:

I roughly understand what debug CSA checkers are. However, I don't see much value in exposing them in clang-tidy. While it may be valuable to look at the CFG dump when developing a clang-tidy check, for example, but this can be done using clang

$ clang -cc1 -help | grep cfg
 -cfg-add-implicit-dtors Add C++ implicit destructors to CFGs for all analyses
 -cfg-add-initializers   Add C++ initializers to CFGs for all analyses
 -cfg-dump               Display Control-Flow Graphs
 -cfg-view               View Control-Flow Graphs using GraphViz
 -unoptimized-cfg        Generate unoptimized CFGs for all analyses

All CSA debug checkers can also be invoked using clang -cc1 --analyze. The only thing clang-tidy could bring is a possibility to more easily run all these tools on a file from a project that is using a compilation database. However, that doesn't seem like a very valuable functionality, because 1. working on small artificial test cases (or test cases reduced from real code) is easier, 2. in a rare case when a file from a real project needs to be analyzed, it's possible to get compilation arguments and feed them to clang (e.g. using clang-tidy -extra-arg=-v file.cpp).