cppcheck/man/manual.docbook

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">
<book>
<bookinfo>
<title>Cppcheck 1.63 dev</title>
<date>2013-07-14</date>
</bookinfo>
<chapter>
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>Cppcheck is an analysis tool for C/C++ code. Unlike C/C++ compilers
and many other analysis tools, it doesn't detect syntax errors. Cppcheck
only detects the types of bugs that the compilers normally fail to detect.
The goal is no false positives.</para>
<para>Supported code and platforms:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>You can check non-standard code that includes various compiler
extensions, inline assembly code, etc.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Cppcheck should be compilable by any C++ compiler that handles
the latest C++ standard.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Cppcheck should work on any platform that has sufficient CPU and
memory.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>Accuracy</para>
<para>Please understand that there are limits of Cppcheck. Cppcheck is
rarely wrong about reported errors. But there are many bugs that it
doesn't detect.</para>
<para>You will find more bugs in your software by testing your software
carefully, than by using Cppcheck. You will find more bugs in your
software by instrumenting your software, than by using Cppcheck. But
Cppcheck can still detect some of the bugs that you miss when testing and
instrumenting your software.</para>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Getting started</title>
<section>
<title>First test</title>
<para>Here is a simple code</para>
<programlisting>int main()
{
char a[10];
a[10] = 0;
return 0;
}</programlisting>
<para>If you save that into <filename>file1.c</filename> and
execute:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck file1.c</programlisting>
<para>The output from cppcheck will then be:</para>
<programlisting>Checking file1.c...
[file1.c:4]: (error) Array 'a[10]' index 10 out of bounds</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Checking all files in a folder</title>
<para>Normally a program has many source files. And you want to check
them all. Cppcheck can check all source files in a directory:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck path</programlisting>
<para>If "path" is a folder then cppcheck will check all source files in
this folder.</para>
<programlisting>Checking path/file1.cpp...
1/2 files checked 50% done
Checking path/file2.cpp...
2/2 files checked 100% done</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Excluding a file or folder from checking</title>
<para>To exclude a file or folder, there are two options.</para>
<para>The first option is to only provide the paths and files you want
to check.</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck src/a src/b</programlisting>
<para>All files under <filename class="directory">src/a</filename> and
<filename class="directory">src/b</filename> are then checked.</para>
<para>The second option is to use <parameter
class="command">-i</parameter>, with it you specify files/paths to
ignore. With this command no files in <filename
class="directory">src/c</filename> are checked:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck -isrc/c src</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Severities</title>
<para>The possible severities for messages are:</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>error</term>
<listitem>
<para>used when bugs are found</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>warning</term>
<listitem>
<para>suggestions about defensive programming to prevent
bugs</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>style</term>
<listitem>
<para>stylistic issues related to code cleanup (unused functions,
redundant code, constness, and such)</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>performance</term>
<listitem>
<para>Suggestions for making the code faster. These suggestions
are only based on common knowledge. It is not certain you'll get
any measurable difference in speed by fixing these
messages.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>portability</term>
<listitem>
<para>portability warnings. 64-bit portability. code might work
different on different compilers. etc.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>information</term>
<listitem>
<para>Informational messages about checking problems.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</section>
<section>
<title>Enable messages</title>
<para>By default only <parameter class="command">error</parameter>
messages are shown. Through the <parameter
class="command">--enable</parameter> command more checks can be
enabled.</para>
<programlisting># enable warning messages
cppcheck --enable=warning file.c
# enable performance messages
cppcheck --enable=performance file.c
# enable information messages
cppcheck --enable=information file.c
# For historical reasons, --enable=style enables warning, performance,
# portability and style messages. These are all reported as "style" when
# using the old xml format.
cppcheck --enable=style file.c
# enable warning and information messages
cppcheck --enable=warning,information file.c
# enable unusedFunction checking. This is not enabled by --enable=style
# because it doesn't work well on libraries.
cppcheck --enable=unusedFunction file.c
# enable all messages
cppcheck --enable=all</programlisting>
<para>Please note that <literal>--enable=unusedFunction</literal> should
only be used when the whole program is scanned. And therefore
<literal>--enable=all</literal> should also only be used when the whole
program is scanned. The reason is that the unusedFunction checking will
warn if a function is not called. There will be noise if function calls
are not seen.</para>
<section>
<title>Inconclusive checks</title>
<para>By default Cppcheck only writes error messages if it is certain.
With <parameter class="command">--inconclusive</parameter> error
messages will also be written when the analysis is
inconclusive.</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --inconclusive path</programlisting>
<para>This can of course cause false warnings, it might be reported
that there are bugs even though there are not. Only use this command
if false warnings are acceptable.</para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Saving results in file</title>
<para>Many times you will want to save the results in a file. You can
use the normal shell redirection for piping error output to a
file.</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck file1.c 2&gt; err.txt</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Multithreaded checking</title>
<para>The option -j is used to specify the number of threads you want to
use. For example, to use 4 threads to check the files in a
folder:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck -j 4 path</programlisting>
</section>
</chapter>
<chapter id="preprocessor-configurations">
<title>Preprocessor configurations</title>
<para>By default Cppcheck will check all preprocessor configurations
(except those that have #error in them).</para>
<para>You can use -D to change this. When you use -D, cppcheck will by
default only check the given configuration and nothing else. This is how
compilers work. But you can use <literal>--force</literal> or
<literal><literal>--max-configs</literal></literal> to override the number
of configurations.</para>
<programlisting># check all configurations
cppcheck file.c
# only check the configuration A
cppcheck -DA file.c
# check all configurations when macro A is defined
cppcheck -DA --force file.c</programlisting>
<para>Another useful flag might be -U. It undefines a symbol. Example
usage:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck -UX file.c</programlisting>
<para>That will mean that X is not defined. Cppcheck will not check what
happens when X is defined.</para>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>XML output</title>
<para>Cppcheck can generate the output in <literal>XML</literal> format.
There is an old <literal>XML</literal> format (version 1) and a new
<literal>XML</literal> format (version 2). Please use the new version if
you can.</para>
<para>The old version is kept for backwards compatibility only. It will
not be changed. But it will likely be removed someday. Use
<parameter>--xml</parameter> to enable this format.</para>
<para>The new version fixes a few problems with the old format. The new
format will probably be updated in future versions of cppcheck with new
attributes and elements. A sample command to check a file and output
errors in the new <literal>XML</literal> format:</para>
<para><programlisting>cppcheck --xml-version=2 file1.cpp</programlisting>Here
is a sample version 2 report:</para>
<programlisting>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
&lt;results version="2"&gt;
&lt;cppcheck version="1.53"&gt;
&lt;errors&gt;
&lt;error id="someError" severity="error" msg="short error text"
verbose="long error text" inconclusive="true"&gt;
&lt;location file="file.c" line="1"/&gt;
&lt;/error&gt;
&lt;/errors&gt;
&lt;/results&gt;</programlisting>
<section>
<title>The &lt;error&gt; element</title>
<para>Each error is reported in a <literal>&lt;error&gt;</literal>
element. Attributes:</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag class="attribute">id</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>id of error. These are always valid symbolnames.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag class="attribute">severity</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>either: <literal>error</literal>,
<literal>warning</literal>, <literal>style</literal>,
<literal>performance</literal>, <literal>portability</literal> or
<literal>information</literal></para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag class="attribute">msg</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>the error message in short format</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag>verbose</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>the error message in long format.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag>inconclusive</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>This attribute is only used when the message is
inconclusive.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</section>
<section>
<title>The &lt;location&gt; element</title>
<para>All locations related to an error is listed with
<literal>&lt;location&gt;</literal> elements. The primary location is
listed first.</para>
<para>Attributes:</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag class="attribute">file</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>filename. Both relative and absolute paths are
possible</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag class="attribute">line</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>a number</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><sgmltag>msg</sgmltag></term>
<listitem>
<para>this attribute doesn't exist yet. But in the future we may
add a short message for each location.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</section>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Reformatting the output</title>
<para>If you want to reformat the output so it looks different you can use
templates.</para>
<para>To get Visual Studio compatible output you can use <parameter
class="command">--template=vs</parameter>:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --template=vs gui/test.cpp</programlisting>
<para>This output will look like this:</para>
<programlisting>Checking gui/test.cpp...
gui/test.cpp(31): error: Memory leak: b
gui/test.cpp(16): error: Mismatching allocation and deallocation: k</programlisting>
<para>To get gcc compatible output you can use <parameter
class="command">--template=gcc</parameter>:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --template=gcc gui/test.cpp</programlisting>
<para>The output will look like this:</para>
<programlisting>Checking gui/test.cpp...
gui/test.cpp:31: error: Memory leak: b
gui/test.cpp:16: error: Mismatching allocation and deallocation: k</programlisting>
<para>You can write your own pattern (for example a comma-separated
format):</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --template="{file},{line},{severity},{id},{message}" gui/test.cpp</programlisting>
<para>The output will look like this:</para>
<programlisting>Checking gui/test.cpp...
gui/test.cpp,31,error,memleak,Memory leak: b
gui/test.cpp,16,error,mismatchAllocDealloc,Mismatching allocation and deallocation: k</programlisting>
<para>The following format specifiers are supported:</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>callstack</term>
<listitem>
<para>callstack - if available</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>file</term>
<listitem>
<para>filename</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>id</term>
<listitem>
<para>message id</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>line</term>
<listitem>
<para>line number</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>message</term>
<listitem>
<para>verbose message text</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>severity</term>
<listitem>
<para>severity</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>The escape sequences \b (backspace), \n (newline), \r (formfeed) and
\t (horizontal tab) are supported.</para>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Suppressions</title>
<para>If you want to filter out certain errors you can suppress
these.</para>
<section>
<title>Suppressing a certain error type</title>
<para>You can suppress certain types of errors. The format for such a
suppression is one of:</para>
<programlisting>[error id]:[filename]:[line]
[error id]:[filename2]
[error id]</programlisting>
<para>The <replaceable>error id</replaceable> is the id that you want to
suppress. The easiest way to get it is to use the <parameter
class="command">--xml</parameter> command line flag. Copy and paste the
<replaceable>id</replaceable> string from the XML output. This may be
<literal>*</literal> to suppress all warnings (for a specified file or
files).</para>
<para>The <replaceable>filename</replaceable> may include the wildcard
characters <literal>*</literal> or <literal>?</literal>, which match any
sequence of characters or any single character respectively. It is
recommended that you use "/" as path separator on all operating
systems.</para>
<section>
<title>Command line suppression</title>
<para>The <parameter class="command">--suppress=</parameter> command
line option is used to specify suppressions on the command line.
Example:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --suppress=memleak:src/file1.cpp src/</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Listing suppressions in a file</title>
<para>You can create a suppressions file. Example:</para>
<programlisting>// suppress memleak and exceptNew errors in the file src/file1.cpp
memleak:src/file1.cpp
exceptNew:src/file1.cpp
// suppress all uninitvar errors in all files
uninitvar</programlisting>
<para>Note that you may add empty lines and comments in the
suppressions file.</para>
<para>You can use the suppressions file like this:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --suppressions suppressions.txt src/</programlisting>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Inline suppressions</title>
<para>Suppressions can also be added directly in the code by adding
comments that contain special keywords. Before adding such comments,
consider that the code readability is sacrificed a little.</para>
<para>This code will normally generate an error message:</para>
<programlisting>void f() {
char arr[5];
arr[10] = 0;
}</programlisting>
<para>The output is:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck test.c
Checking test.c...
[test.c:3]: (error) Array 'arr[5]' index 10 out of bounds</programlisting>
<para>To suppress the error message, a comment can be added:</para>
<programlisting>void f() {
char arr[5];
// cppcheck-suppress arrayIndexOutOfBounds
arr[10] = 0;
}</programlisting>
<para>Now the --inline-suppr flag can be used to suppress the warning.
No error is reported when invoking cppcheck this way:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --inline-suppr test.c</programlisting>
</section>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Rules</title>
<para>You can define custom rules using regular expressions.</para>
<para>These rules can not perform sophisticated analysis of the code. But
they give you an easy way to check for various simple patterns in the
code.</para>
<para>To get started writing rules, see the related articles here:</para>
<para><uri>http://sourceforge.net/projects/cppcheck/files/Articles/</uri></para>
<para>The file format for rules is:</para>
<programlisting>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;rule&gt;
&lt;tokenlist&gt;LIST&lt;/tokenlist&gt;
&lt;pattern&gt;PATTERN&lt;/pattern&gt;
&lt;message&gt;
&lt;id&gt;ID&lt;/id&gt;
&lt;severity&gt;SEVERITY&lt;/severity&gt;
&lt;summary&gt;SUMMARY&lt;/summary&gt;
&lt;/message&gt;
&lt;/rule&gt;</programlisting>
<section>
<title>&lt;tokenlist&gt;</title>
<para>The <literal>&lt;tokenlist&gt;</literal> element is optional. With
this element you can control what tokens are checked. The
<literal>LIST</literal> can be either <literal>define</literal>,
<literal>raw</literal>, <literal>normal</literal> or
<literal>simple</literal>.</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>define</term>
<listitem>
<para>used to check #define preprocessor statements.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>raw</term>
<listitem>
<para>used to check the preprocessor output.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>normal</term>
<listitem>
<para>used to check the <literal>normal</literal> token list.
There are some simplifications.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>simple</term>
<listitem>
<para>used to check the simple token list. All simplifications are
used. Most Cppcheck checks use the simple token list.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>If there is no &lt;tokenlist&gt; element then
<literal>simple</literal> is used automatically.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>&lt;pattern&gt;</title>
<para>The <literal>PATTERN</literal> is the
<literal>PCRE</literal>-compatible regular expression that will be
executed.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>&lt;id&gt;</title>
<para>The ID specify the user-defined message id.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>&lt;severity&gt;</title>
<para>The <literal>SEVERITY</literal> must be one of the
<literal>Cppcheck</literal> severities: <literal>information</literal>,
<literal>performance</literal>, <literal>portability</literal>,
<literal>style</literal>, <literal>warning</literal>, or
<literal>error</literal>.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>&lt;summary&gt;</title>
<para>Optional. The summary for the message. If no summary is given, the
matching tokens is written.</para>
</section>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Library configuration</title>
<para>When external libraries are used, such as windows/posix/gtk/qt/etc,
<literal>Cppcheck</literal> doesn't know how the external functions
behave. <literal>Cppcheck</literal> then fails to detect various problems
such as leaks, buffer overflows, possible null pointer dereferences, etc.
But this can be fixed with configuration files.</para>
<para>If you create a configuration file for a popular library, we would
appreciate if you upload it to us.</para>
<section>
<title>Memory/resource leaks</title>
<para>Here is an example program:</para>
<para><programlisting>void test()
{
HPEN pen = CreatePen(PS_SOLID, 1, RGB(255,0,0));
}</programlisting></para>
<para>The code example above has a resource leak -
<literal>CreatePen()</literal> is a windows function that creates a pen.
However Cppcheck doesn't assume that return values from functions must
be freed. There is no error message:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck pen1.c
Checking pen1.c...</programlisting>
<para>If you provide a windows configuration file then
<literal>Cppcheck</literal> detects the bug:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck --library=windows.cfg pen1.c
Checking pen1.c...
[pen1.c:3]: (error) Resource leak: pen</programlisting>
<para>Here is a minimal <literal>windows.cfg</literal> file:</para>
<programlisting>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;def&gt;
&lt;resource&gt;
&lt;alloc&gt;CreatePen&lt;/alloc&gt;
&lt;dealloc&gt;DeleteObject&lt;/dealloc&gt;
&lt;/resource&gt;
&lt;/def&gt;</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Uninitialized memory</title>
<para>Here is an example program:</para>
<programlisting>void test()
{
char buffer1[1024];
char buffer2[1024];
CopyMemory(buffer1, buffer2, 1024);
}</programlisting>
<para>The bug here is that buffer2 is uninitialized. The second argument
for CopyMemory needs to be initialized. However
<literal>Cppcheck</literal> assumes that it is fine to pass
uninitialized variables to functions:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck uninit.c
Checking uninit.c...</programlisting>
<para>If you provide a windows configuration file then Cppcheck detects
the bug:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck --library=windows.cfg uninit.c
Checking uninit.c...
[uninit.c:5]: (error) Uninitialized variable: buffer2</programlisting>
<para>Here is the minimal <literal>windows.cfg</literal>:</para>
<para><programlisting>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;def&gt;
&lt;function name="CopyMemory"&gt;
&lt;arg nr="2"&gt;
&lt;not-uninit/&gt;
&lt;/arg&gt;
&lt;/function&gt;
&lt;/def&gt;</programlisting></para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Null pointers</title>
<para>Cppcheck assumes it's ok to pass NULL pointers to functions. Here
is an example program:</para>
<programlisting>void test()
{
CopyMemory(NULL, NULL, 1024);
}</programlisting>
<para>The MSDN documentation is not clear if that is ok or not. But
let's assume it's bad. Cppcheck assumes that it's ok to pass NULL to
functions so no error is reported:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck null.c
Checking null.c...</programlisting>
<para>If you provide a windows configuration file then
<literal>Cppcheck</literal> detects the bug:</para>
<programlisting>cppcheck --library=windows.cfg null.c
Checking null.c...
[null.c:3]: (error) Null pointer dereference</programlisting>
<para>Here is a minimal <literal>windows.cfg</literal> file:</para>
<programlisting>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;def&gt;
&lt;function name="CopyMemory"&gt;
&lt;arg nr="1"&gt;
&lt;not-null/&gt;
&lt;/arg&gt;
&lt;/function&gt;
&lt;/def&gt;</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>noreturn</title>
<para>Cppcheck doesn't assume that functions always return. Here is an
example code:</para>
<programlisting>void test(int x)
{
int data, buffer[1024];
if (x == 1)
data = 123;
else
ZeroMemory(buffer, sizeof(buffer));
buffer[0] = data; // &lt;- error: data is uninitialized if x is not 1
}</programlisting>
<para>In theory, if <literal>ZeroMemory</literal> terminates the program
then there is no bug. Cppcheck therefore reports no error:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck noreturn.c
Checking noreturn.c...</programlisting>
<para>However if you use <literal>--check-library</literal> and
<literal>--enable=information</literal> you'll get this:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck --check-library --enable=information noreturn.c
Checking noreturn.c...
[noreturn.c:7]: (information) --check-library: Function ZeroMemory() should have &lt;noreturn&gt; configuration
</programlisting>
<para>If a proper <literal>windows.cfg</literal> is provided, the bug is
detected:</para>
<programlisting># cppcheck --library=windows.cfg noreturn.c
Checking noreturn.c...
[noreturn.c:8]: (error) Uninitialized variable: data</programlisting>
<para>Here is a minimal <literal>windows.cfg</literal> file:</para>
<programlisting>&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;def&gt;
&lt;function name="ZeroMemory"&gt;
&lt;noreturn&gt;false&lt;/noreturn&gt;
&lt;/function&gt;
&lt;/def&gt;</programlisting>
</section>
<section>
<title>Example configuration for strcpy()</title>
<para>The proper configuration for the standard strcpy() function would
be:</para>
<programlisting> &lt;function name="strcpy"&gt;
&lt;leak-ignore/&gt;
&lt;noreturn&gt;false&lt;/noreturn&gt;
&lt;arg nr="1"&gt;
&lt;not-null/&gt;
&lt;/arg&gt;
&lt;arg nr="2"&gt;
&lt;not-null/&gt;
&lt;not-uninit/&gt;
&lt;/arg&gt;
&lt;/function&gt;</programlisting>
<para>The <literal>&lt;leak-ignore/&gt;</literal> tells Cppcheck to
ignore this function call in the leaks checking. Passing allocated
memory to this function won't mean it will be deallocated.</para>
<para>The <literal>&lt;noreturn&gt;</literal> tells Cppcheck if this
function returns or not.</para>
<para>The first argument that the function takes is a pointer. It must
not be a null pointer, therefore <literal>&lt;not-null&gt;</literal> is
used.</para>
<para>The second argument the function takes is a pointer. It must not
be null. And it must point at initialized data. Using
<literal>&lt;not-null&gt;</literal> and
<literal>&lt;not-uninit&gt;</literal> is correct.</para>
</section>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>HTML report</title>
<para>You can convert the XML output from cppcheck into a HTML report.
You'll need Python and the pygments module (<ulink
url="http://pygments.org/">http://pygments.org/</ulink>) for this to work.
In the Cppcheck source tree there is a folder <filename
class="directory">htmlreport</filename> that contains a script that
transforms a Cppcheck XML file into HTML output.</para>
<para>This command generates the help screen:</para>
<programlisting>htmlreport/cppcheck-htmlreport -h</programlisting>
<para>The output screen says:</para>
<programlisting>Usage: cppcheck-htmlreport [options]
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--file=FILE The cppcheck xml output file to read defects from.
Default is reading from stdin.
--report-dir=REPORT_DIR
The directory where the html report content is written.
--source-dir=SOURCE_DIR
Base directory where source code files can be found.</programlisting>
<para>An example usage:</para>
<programlisting>./cppcheck gui/test.cpp --xml 2&gt; err.xml
htmlreport/cppcheck-htmlreport --file=err.xml --report-dir=test1 --source-dir=.</programlisting>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Graphical user interface</title>
<section>
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>A Cppcheck GUI is available.</para>
<para>The main screen is shown immediately when the GUI is
started.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Check source code</title>
<para>Use the <guimenu>Check</guimenu> menu.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Inspecting results</title>
<para>The results are shown in a list.</para>
<para>You can show/hide certain types of messages through the
<guimenu>View</guimenu> menu.</para>
<para>Results can be saved to an XML file that can later be opened. See
<literal>Save results to file</literal> and <literal>Open
XML</literal>.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Settings</title>
<para>The language can be changed at any time by using the
<guimenu>Language</guimenu> menu.</para>
<para>More settings are available in <menuchoice>
<guimenu>Edit</guimenu>
<guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem>
</menuchoice>.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Project files</title>
<para>The project files are used to store project specific settings.
These settings are:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>include folders</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>preprocessor defines</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>As you can read in <link
linkend="preprocessor-configurations">chapter 3</link> in this manual
the default is that Cppcheck checks all configurations. So only provide
preprocessor defines if you want to limit the checking.</para>
</section>
</chapter>
</book>