Is using splint a waste of time ?

[llothar]

While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

But after reading a little bit the manual and looking at the source
and the generated messages. I'm not sure if the amout of time to set
it up and to add all the comments is justified by the results.

What's your opinion?

Does anybody know of a larger (10KLoc) real world system that is
lintable ?

[santosh]

llothar wrote:

While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

But after reading a little bit the manual and looking at the source
and the generated messages. I'm not sure if the amout of time to set
it up and to add all the comments is justified by the results.

What's your opinion?

I've used a lint, (splint), in the past and I've found some use with
it. Yes, getting to exploit it well, takes a bit of time, (as does any
non-trivial tool), but it may pay off in the long run. It hasn't
really been a killer advantage for me yet, but YMMV.

<snip>

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

llothar wrote:

While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

No sure what OS you are on, but on Linux I am a big fan of Valgrind:

http://valgrind.org/

Valgrind takes your executable (with debug info compiled in) and
monitors all memory accesses and reports things like uninitialized
data, buffer overruns etc.

The big advantage of this over lint/split, is that you don't need
all the annotations in your source code.

I think that the commercial program Purify on windows does something
similar.

Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology,
threatens an entire industry's economic vitality and future
security." -- Jack Valenti (MPAA president) on the video
cassette recorder, 1982.

[Jack Klein]

On 4 Mar 2007 03:52:56 -0800, "llothar" <ll*****@web.dewrote in
comp.lang.c:

While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

But after reading a little bit the manual and looking at the source
and the generated messages. I'm not sure if the amout of time to set
it up and to add all the comments is justified by the results.

What's your opinion?

Does anybody know of a larger (10KLoc) real world system that is
lintable ?

I have no experience with splint, but Gimpel's PCLint is a truly
marvelous tool. I know of several projects >50KLoc that are
completely processed by it, and using most of MISRA C's rules as well.

In fact, the larger the project, the greater the payback for the
effort of getting it to work. This is always assuming that you set up
your lint and reasonable, and enforced, coding standards before the
code is written, and adhere to them.

And, of course, make sure no code is allowed into the build until it
has been at least linted, if not code inspected.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
FAQs for
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alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++
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[Ian Collins]

llothar wrote:

While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

But after reading a little bit the manual and looking at the source
and the generated messages. I'm not sure if the amout of time to set
it up and to add all the comments is justified by the results.

What's your opinion?

Does anybody know of a larger (10KLoc) real world system that is
lintable ?

OpensSolaris. The build process include both compile and lint runs.

--
Ian Collins.

[user923005]

On Mar 4, 3:52 am, "llothar" <[e-mail]:

While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

But after reading a little bit the manual and looking at the source
and the generated messages. I'm not sure if the amout of time to set
it up and to add all the comments is justified by the results.

What's your opinion?

I use it with C. I prefer Gimpel's PC-Lint, but both are good.

Does anybody know of a larger (10KLoc) real world system that is
lintable ?

We have one million (roughly) lines that I pass through PC-Lint once
in the while, but it's C++ code and not C and so we cannot use Splint
(which is C only).

[Randy Howard]

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 15:49:22 -0600, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote
(in article <45********@news.peopletelecom.com.au>):

llothar wrote:

>While 90% of my application is written in Eiffel i have a few modules
that are in C and i'm still gettings crashs from time to time. Not
sure where it comes from but i thought about using lint as just
another helping item in the toolchain.

No sure what OS you are on, but on Linux I am a big fan of Valgrind:

http://valgrind.org/

Yes, it's good enough that even if you don't use Linux as your primary
development system, it's nice to compile and use the code on a Linux
box for debugging with valgrind if you suspect a problem in an area it
can detect.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw