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SQLite is already a mature codebase. You would hope (expect?) that most issues that a Static Analyser would pick up would be purely stylistic ones in this case.
by TickleSteve 10y ago
SQLite is already a mature codebase. You would hope (expect?) that most issues that a Static Analyser would pick up would be purely stylistic ones in this case.
This speaks more to the maturity and robustness of the SQLite codebase than it does of static analysis as a type of tool.
Static Analysis is very useful in the development phase of a project where you can treat them effectively as compiler warnings if your build system is setup that way.
...and that isn't to say that its not worth still using SA on mature codebases, just because a codebase is mature does not indicate its quality.
- CodexArcanum 10y agoI've found static analysis (and related concepts e.g. type systems) to be extremely useful for safely refactoring code. Much more so than tests, which tend to just break and require rewriting. But as you say, once the code base is mature that kind of large scale code shuffling is less likely. (Not to speak poorly of testing, I'm a big fan of that too. Why not use every tool at one's disposal to ensure quality?)
- TickleSteve 10y agotrue, though there is a difference.... SA will capture issues related to the implementation but in itself it has no knowledge of application-specific behaviour. Tests on the other hand do have application-specific knowledge and this is where their value lies.