Constantine

Constantine is a toy project to learn how to write Clang plugin.

Implements pseudo const analysis. Generates warnings about variables, which were declared without const qualifier.

How to build

Constantine was tested on Linux only. For Unbuntu/Debian build, you can take a look at the github workflow file.

Prerequisites

1. C++ compiler to compile the sources.

2. cmake to configure the build process.

3. make to run the build. Makefiles generated by cmake.

4. Install LLVM/Clang. Either you do install from sources or package for your distribution, the Clang version shall match with Constantine version. Make sure that llvm-config and clang executables are in the PATH environment.

5. Install Lit. This is optional, do only if you want to run the tests! Lit is the LLVM Integrated Tester. If you installed Clang from sources, you shall have it automaticaly. If your package manager does not provide it, you can simply install from PyPI because it is written in python.

Build Constantine

It could be the best to build it in a separate build directory.

cmake $CONSTANTINE_SOURCE_DIR
make all
make install  # to install
make check    # to run tests
make package  # to create tgz, rpm, deb packages

You can configure the build process with passing arguments to cmake.

How to use

To run the plugin against your sources you need to tune the build script of your project. Sure you need to replace the compiler to Clang. To hook the plugin into the Clang driver, you need to pass extra flags which are Clang specific, therefore those are 'escaped' like this:

CC="clang"
CXX="clang++"
CXX_FLAGS+=" -Xclang -load -Xclang $CONSTANTINE_LIB_PATH/libconstantine.so"
CXX_FLAGS+=" -Xclang -add-plugin -Xclang constantine"

Problem reports

If you find a bug in this documentation or elsewhere in the program or would like to propose an improvement, please use the project's github issue tracker. Please describing the bug and where you found it. If you have a suggestion how to fix it, include that as well. Patches are also welcome.