PCRE is a library that is used by the optional "rules" feature for the command line version of cppcheck. It is readily available on Linux and Mac OS X, but must be obtained separately for Windows. If you're using qmake to generate makefiles, the following behavior applies: - If you're not on Windows, it assumes by default that you have PCRE and want to enable rules support. You can disable rules support (removing the PCRE dependency) by passing HAVE_RULES=no to qmake. - If you are on Windows, but have PCRE available, you can enable rules support by passing HAVE_RULES=yes to qmake. - Note: This includes using build.bat since it calls qmake - to use PCRE and build.bat, you need to run set HAVE_RULES=yes before each run of build.bat Build instructions ------------------ Windows ------- Visual Studio To build PCRE, download the source code from www.pcre.org and CMake (https://cmake.org/download/). We assume you use Visual Studio 2015 - otherwise adapt the commands for your version. VS Solution file cmake . -G "Visual Studio 14 2015" Open PCRE.sln with VS IDE or via cmd: call "%VS140COMNTOOLS%..\..\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86 MSBuild PCRE.sln /target:Build /property:Configuration="Release" For 64-bit target: cmake . -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" or using NMake call "%VS140COMNTOOLS%..\..\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86 cmake . -G "NMake Makefiles" nmake or using MSYS cmake . -G "MSYS Makefiles" make Linux ----- The normal Makefile should work. Install PCRE on Ubuntu might be needed: sudo apt-get install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev Mac OSX ------- Install PCRE: homebre brew install pcre or macport sudo port install pcre Ensure /path/to/pcre.h is in CXXFLAGS, e.g: for homebrew export CXXFLAGS=${CXXFLAGS}:/usr/local/include or macport export CXXFLAGS=${CXXFLAGS}:/opt/local/include Or for MSVC copy pcre.lib and pcre.h in /externals directory.