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The original name of this program was "C++check", but it was later changed to "Cppcheck".

Despite the name, Cppcheck is designed for both C and C++.

A manual is available online.

Cppcheck is a hobby project with limited resources. You can help us by donating CPU (1 core or as many as you like). It is simple:

1. Download (and extract) Cppcheck source code.
2. Run script: python cppcheck/tools/donate-cpu.py.

The script will analyse debian source code and upload the results to a cppcheck server. We need these results both to improve Cppcheck and to detect regressions.

You can stop the script whenever you like with Ctrl C.

Cppcheck requires a C++ compiler with (partial) C++11 support. Minimum required versions are GCC 5.1 / Clang 3.5 / Visual Studio 2015.

To build the GUI application, you need to use the CMake or qmake (deprecated) build system.

When building the command line tool, PCRE is optional. It is used if you build with rules.

There are multiple compilation choices:

• qmake - cross platform build tool (deprecated)
• CMake - cross platform build tool
• Windows: Visual Studio
• Windows: Qt Creator + MinGW
• GNU make
• GCC (g++)
• Clang (clang++)

The minimum required version is CMake 3.5.

Example, compiling Cppcheck with cmake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

If you want to compile the GUI you can use the flag. -DBUILD_GUI=ON

For rules support (requires pcre) use the flag. -DHAVE_RULES=ON

For release builds it is recommended that you use: -DUSE_MATCHCOMPILER=ON

For building the tests use the flag. -DBUILD_TESTS=ON

Using cmake you can generate project files for Visual Studio,XCode,etc.

For single-configuration generators (like "Unix Makefiles") you can generate and build a specific configuration (e.g. "RelWithDebInfo") using:

mkdir build_RelWithDebInfo
cd build_RelWithDebInfo
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo ..
cmake --build . --config RelWithDebInfo

For multi-configuration generators (like "Visual Studio 17 2022") the same is achieved using:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --config RelWithDebInfo

NOTE: This has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Please use CMake instead.

You can use the gui/gui.pro file to build the GUI.

cd gui
qmake
make

Use the cppcheck.sln file. The file is configured for Visual Studio 2019, but the platform toolset can be changed easily to older or newer versions. The solution contains platform targets for both x86 and x64.

To compile with rules, select "Release-PCRE" or "Debug-PCRE" configuration. pcre.lib (pcre64.lib for x64 builds) and pcre.h are expected to be in /externals then. A current version of PCRE for Visual Studio can be obtained using vcpkg.

If you do not wish to use the Visual Studio IDE, you can compile cppcheck from the command line the following command.

msbuild cppcheck.sln

Install MSYS2 to get GNU toolchain with g++ and gdb (https://www.msys2.org/). Create a settings.json file in the .vscode folder with the following content (adjust path as necessary):

{
    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\msys64\\usr\\bin\\bash.exe",
    "terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": [
        "--login",
    ],
    "terminal.integrated.env.windows": {
        "CHERE_INVOKING": "1",
        "MSYSTEM": "MINGW64",
    }
}

Run "make" in the terminal to build cppcheck.

For debugging create a launch.json file in the .vscode folder with the following content, which covers configuration for debugging cppcheck and misra.py:

{
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "cppcheck",
            "type": "cppdbg",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/cppcheck.exe",
            "args": [
                "--dump",
                "${workspaceFolder}/addons/test/misra/misra-test.c"
            ],
            "stopAtEntry": false,
            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
            "environment": [],
            "externalConsole": true,
            "MIMode": "gdb",
            "miDebuggerPath": "C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/gdb.exe",
            "setupCommands": [
                {
                    "description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
                    "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
                    "ignoreFailures": true
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "name": "misra.py",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/addons/misra.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/addons/test/misra/misra-test.c.dump"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The PCRE dll is needed to build the CLI. It can be downloaded here: http://software-download.name/pcre-library-windows/

Simple, unoptimized build (no dependencies):

make

The recommended release build is:

make MATCHCOMPILER=yes FILESDIR=/usr/share/cppcheck HAVE_RULES=yes CXXFLAGS="-O2 -DNDEBUG -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused-function"

Flags:

1. MATCHCOMPILER=yes Python is used to optimise cppcheck. The Token::Match patterns are converted into C++ code at compile time.

2. FILESDIR=/usr/share/cppcheck Specify folder where cppcheck files are installed (addons, cfg, platform)

3. HAVE_RULES=yes Enable rules (PCRE is required if this is used)

4. CXXFLAGS="-O2 -DNDEBUG -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused-function" Enables most compiler optimizations, disables cppcheck-internal debugging code and enables basic compiler warnings.

If you just want to build Cppcheck without dependencies then you can use this command:

g++ -o cppcheck -std=c++11 -Iexternals -Iexternals/simplecpp -Iexternals/tinyxml2 -Iexternals/picojson -Ilib cli/*.cpp lib/*.cpp externals/simplecpp/simplecpp.cpp externals/tinyxml2/*.cpp

If you want to use --rule and --rule-file then dependencies are needed:

g++ -o cppcheck -std=c++11 -lpcre -DHAVE_RULES -Ilib -Iexternals -Iexternals/simplecpp -Iexternals/tinyxml2 cli/*.cpp lib/*.cpp externals/simplecpp/simplecpp.cpp externals/tinyxml2/*.cpp

mingw32-make

If you encounter the following error with MATCHCOMPILER=yes you need to specify your Python interpreter via PYTHON_INTERPRETER.

process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, which python3, ...) failed.
makefile:24: pipe: No error
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, which python, ...) failed.
makefile:27: pipe: No error
makefile:30: *** Did not find a Python interpreter.  Stop.

1. Create an empty project file / makefile.
2. Add all cpp files in the cppcheck cli and lib folders to the project file / makefile.
3. Add all cpp files in the externals folders to the project file / makefile.
4. Compile.

sudo apt-get install mingw32
make CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ LDFLAGS="-lshlwapi" RDYNAMIC=""
mv cppcheck cppcheck.exe

Besides building yourself on the platform of your choice there are also several ways to obtain pre-built packages.
Note: The non-Windows packages are not maintained by the Cppcheck team but by the respective packagers instead.

• (Windows) An official Windows installer is available via the official Cppcheck SourceForge page: https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io/.
• (Linux/Unix) Many major distros offer Cppcheck packages via their integrated package managers (yum, apt, pacman, etc.). See https://pkgs.org/search/?q=cppcheck for an overview.
• (Linux/Unix) Unless you are using a "rolling" distro, it is likely that they are not carrying the latest version. There are several external (mainly unsupported) repositories like AUR (ArchLinux), PPA (ubuntu), EPEL (CentOS/Fedora) etc. which provide up-to-date packages.
• (Linux/Unix) The Canonical Snapcraft package is unmaintained and contains a very old version. Please refrain from using it! See https://trac.cppcheck.net/ticket/11641 for more details.
• (MacOS) A package is available via Homebrew (brew). See https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/cppcheck#default.

https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io/