4 ms·

I would expect many of these tools to catch these types of bugs. The challenging thing for us has been to catch only bugs, and to catch them very fast during no

I would expect many of these tools to catch these types of bugs. The challenging thing for us has been to catch only bugs, and to catch them very fast during normal compilation. A lot of the static analyses we've looked into (and I'm hoping for more detailed blog posts about that in the future) find plenty of bugs, but also find lots of non-bugs. Combine that with being too slow to run during the normal build, and you can't break the build when such a bug is found. I think one of the most interesting aspects of this is how we catch the bugs early, and force developers to fix them immediately by breaking the build.

mcbain 15y ago
Static analysis is a great tool - Clang's isn't too bad - but it isn't the right one to drop into a normal workflow. We still develop using GCC - for our use case Clang performance isn't there yet - but have our continuous integration system perform Clang builds (as well as other platform/compiler variants, with unit+regression tests, etc.) so we miss out on the immediate build breakage that you mention, but do find out within ~30 mins if someone slipped up.
spitfire 15y ago
These sort of articles (and the attendant comments about false positives) always scream out for Ada to me. It's a language designed by a calm, careful thinker back in the 80's for life critical programs. It has everything Java and C++ have except the vast number of undefined states and it's designed for static analysis. By designed I mean, there are formal verifiers and the NSA has used it in a test security system. Plus the compiled code is pretty fast. So if you're feeling the need to reduce your workload take a look at it, you might be surprised.
- cageface 15y ago
  What kinds of libraries are available for Ada? Half the reason I use C++ is that half the code I need to write is already available in mature libraries.
  - spitfire 15y ago
    Library support is aimed squarely at realtime life critical systems. You're more likely to find a library with some sort of safety certification than not. If you're expecting to use the latest web libraries or hadoop you'll be disappointed. However, there is a small collection of oss Ada libraries out there.
    - axman6 15y ago
      I seem to remember there was a pretty interesting web framework written in Ada, Adaweb I think? Anyway, Ada has some other amazingly cool features. The concurrency primitives it offers are very cool, lets you make some much stronger guarantees about the interactions between threads than any other language I've seen. For example, you can define rendezvous sections, which if memory serves, are pieces of code that are guaranteed to only be run once both threads participating in the rendezvous and neither thread can leave the section until both are ready.
      - spitfire 15y ago
        There's ada web server (aws) which is neat. Similar idea to the java web kits like jetty. You can even hotplug code during runtime. You're right about the concurrency. Ada has a bunch of stuff like that built into the language since 1983. The particularly cool toys I like are SPARK (a formal verifier tool) and stackcheck - tells you exactly how deep in the stack your code can possibly go. (Yes you have to annotate cycles.)
- iskander 15y ago
  Admittedly I only programmed in Ada for a few months, but I found it to be an unbearably tedious language. The verbosity is monstrous--- the type system is inexpressive; it feels primitive. Nothing is inferred, everything is repeated. Ugh, I would rather code exclusively in C++ templates than touch Ada again.
  - spitfire 15y ago
    I will freely admit that Ada is not appropriate for all uses. But for the sort of thing you'd want to use Ada for (life critical systems, critical infrastructure, control systems, etc) The explicit type system, explicit declaration, statically typed system is ideal. I particularly like the ability to declare down to the bit level how my data is stored. Very useful for working with low level hardware. Take a look again, with an eye towards large scale long lived critical systems. You'll find that explicitness a feature, as is the very strict static typing. Oh, and they got pointers right the first time. EDIT: Forgot to mention the coolness of the type system - you can declare ranges and other type information and the compiler will hold that requirement strictly. for example type direction is range 0..359; Declares the obvious, but now you can have the compiler error if you assign a direction type with a value that might be outside that range. Even if you don't set that option you can always use the foo'valid attribute to check that foo is within bounds. This is used to check for stray cosmic radiation (seriously!). Yes it seems like overkill. But when you come back to 20 year old code that's still running you'll smile.
    - protomyth 15y ago
      I would also add that Ada compilers do generate some surprisingly efficient executables. This helps quite a lot in the embeded space.

mcbain 15y ago

Static analysis is a great tool - Clang's isn't too bad - but it isn't the right one to drop into a normal workflow. We still develop using GCC - for our use case Clang performance isn't there yet - but have our continuous integration system perform Clang builds (as well as other platform/compiler variants, with unit+regression tests, etc.) so we miss out on the immediate build breakage that you mention, but do find out within ~30 mins if someone slipped up.

spitfire 15y ago

These sort of articles (and the attendant comments about false positives) always scream out for Ada to me. It's a language designed by a calm, careful thinker back in the 80's for life critical programs. It has everything Java and C++ have except the vast number of undefined states and it's designed for static analysis. By designed I mean, there are formal verifiers and the NSA has used it in a test security system. Plus the compiled code is pretty fast. So if you're feeling the need to reduce your workload take a look at it, you might be surprised.

cageface 15y ago
What kinds of libraries are available for Ada? Half the reason I use C++ is that half the code I need to write is already available in mature libraries.
- spitfire 15y ago
  Library support is aimed squarely at realtime life critical systems. You're more likely to find a library with some sort of safety certification than not. If you're expecting to use the latest web libraries or hadoop you'll be disappointed. However, there is a small collection of oss Ada libraries out there.
  - axman6 15y ago
    I seem to remember there was a pretty interesting web framework written in Ada, Adaweb I think? Anyway, Ada has some other amazingly cool features. The concurrency primitives it offers are very cool, lets you make some much stronger guarantees about the interactions between threads than any other language I've seen. For example, you can define rendezvous sections, which if memory serves, are pieces of code that are guaranteed to only be run once both threads participating in the rendezvous and neither thread can leave the section until both are ready.
    - spitfire 15y ago
      There's ada web server (aws) which is neat. Similar idea to the java web kits like jetty. You can even hotplug code during runtime. You're right about the concurrency. Ada has a bunch of stuff like that built into the language since 1983. The particularly cool toys I like are SPARK (a formal verifier tool) and stackcheck - tells you exactly how deep in the stack your code can possibly go. (Yes you have to annotate cycles.)
iskander 15y ago
Admittedly I only programmed in Ada for a few months, but I found it to be an unbearably tedious language. The verbosity is monstrous--- the type system is inexpressive; it feels primitive. Nothing is inferred, everything is repeated. Ugh, I would rather code exclusively in C++ templates than touch Ada again.
- spitfire 15y ago
  I will freely admit that Ada is not appropriate for all uses. But for the sort of thing you'd want to use Ada for (life critical systems, critical infrastructure, control systems, etc) The explicit type system, explicit declaration, statically typed system is ideal. I particularly like the ability to declare down to the bit level how my data is stored. Very useful for working with low level hardware. Take a look again, with an eye towards large scale long lived critical systems. You'll find that explicitness a feature, as is the very strict static typing. Oh, and they got pointers right the first time. EDIT: Forgot to mention the coolness of the type system - you can declare ranges and other type information and the compiler will hold that requirement strictly. for example type direction is range 0..359; Declares the obvious, but now you can have the compiler error if you assign a direction type with a value that might be outside that range. Even if you don't set that option you can always use the foo'valid attribute to check that foo is within bounds. This is used to check for stray cosmic radiation (seriously!). Yes it seems like overkill. But when you come back to 20 year old code that's still running you'll smile.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    I would also add that Ada compilers do generate some surprisingly efficient executables. This helps quite a lot in the embeded space.