Overview

  1. Core Cppcheck
    1. Add 1 new checker (C++)
    2. Abstract interpretation of loops (C++)
    3. Check for unused functions when -j is used (C++)
  2. Configurations
    1. Add a configuration (XML)
    2. Auto generate configuration (C++ / scripting)
    3. GUI for editing configurations (C++,Qt)
  3. Distributed computing
    1. Distributed computing (Network programming, Python / C++)

    4. 1. Core Cppcheck

    Project 1.1
    Name: Add 1 new checker
    Skills required: C++
    Description: There are several tickets in our issue tracker that has ideas for new checkers. The subtasks will be: pick a ticket to fix, write test cases, implement new checker, test it against various projects.

    Project 1.2
    Name: Abstract interpretation of loops
    Skills required: C++
    Description: You will write an C/C++ expression interpreter that uses the Cppcheck syntax tree to interpret the expressions in loops. When there are unknown operands (variables with unknown value, etc) the interpreter shall bailout. You will interpret the loop expressions until : the loop finish , or there is a timeout , or the variables are unchanged. During the interpretation, the variable values will be recorded and saved as ValueFlow values. You can read an overview of the Cppcheck syntax tree and ValueFlow analysis in the cppcheck design document.

    Project 1.3
    Name: Check for unused functions when -j is used
    Skills required: C++, threads
    Description: Currently the check for unused functions only works when the analysis is single-threaded. When multithreaded analysis is done the check is disabled. Currently the check saves function usage information in a container. The same container is used for all files. This should be refactored. For each file there should be a separate container for the function usage information.

    2. Configurations

    Project 2.1
    Name: Add a configuration
    Skills required: C/C++ (not much), XML
    Description: More configuration files are needed for various libraries. Subtasks: choose a popular library. Analyse the library functions and read API documentation. Write proper configuration file for Cppcheck. Test the configuration.

    Project 2.2
    Name: Autogenerated configurations
    Skills required: C++ / scripting
    Description: Auto generate configuration from headers. To parse the headers, you can for instance do this yourself (python script/c++/..) or you can modify cppcheck. All function names will be extracted, and you will also determine what function arguments are passed by value.

    Project 2.3
    Name: GUI for editing configurations
    Skills required: C++, Qt
    Description: A graphical user interface for editing configurations would be nice. This can be developed as a standalone program or integrated in the cppcheck-gui program. However in the end the plan is that it will be merged into the cppcheck-gui program.

    3. Distributed computing

    Project 3.1
    Name: Distributed computing
    Skills required: Network, python / c++
    Description: Make it possible to distribute analysis. A client and server needs to be written. The client will execute cppcheck to perform analysis. The programming language used to write the client and server is either python or c++ (your choice). The server shall be able to handle at least 100 clients. The client and server needs to be cross platform.