Splint

Splint (http://www.splint.org) is a tool for statically checking C programs
for security vulnerabilities and coding mistakes.
It is a great tool for developers to improve their code with rules stricter 
than the compiler's ones (even gcc with -Wall).


The short story about this port

I compiled it years ago on MorphOS and recently I tried to port it to OS4. 
I was not totally convinced by this quick and dirty port but some days later 
Tcheko told me I've just ported splint 3.1.2 for MorphOS. I was pleased 
to see an update for MorphOS too and I was motivated to improve the OS4 port. 
So we started to talk with Tcheko, about our work and also about a common 
release.
     -- Corto--

Yes, MorphOS and OS4 developers can work together to bring better sofware, 
it was already the case with SQLite.

We did separate archives but please consider them as a common port !


Compilation (what I did)

AmigaOS 4 is seen as UNIX when there are ifdef.

Modified files in directory src/ :
- Headers/osd.h : Changed the path separator, the temporary dir
- llmain.c : fixed the detection of file ".splintrc"
- osd.c : here are the major changed but that's logical, this is the source 
related to OS dependant stuff
- Makefile : added "-lm -lunix" in places where there was "-lfl"


Standard installation (recommended)

- Copy "splint" and ".splintrc" in "SDK:Local/C"
- Create the directory "SDK:Local/share/splint"
- Copy directories "lib" and "imports" into it
- Define a CPATH setenv which indicates the system includes path :
setenv CPATH "SDK:clib2/include"
- Copy ENV:CPATH into ENVARC:
Note : I added "-ISDK:Include/include_h" in ".splintrc"


Custom installation

- Unarchive where you want, let us call it MYDIR (for example "Work:splint")
- Set environments variables :
LARCH_PATH must be MYDIR/lib
LCLIMPORTDIR must be MYDIR/imports
- Set them in ENVARC :
copy ENV:LARCH_PATH ENVARC:
copy ENV:LCLIMPORTDIR ENVARC:
- Create CPATH like described above

splint also uses the file ".splintrc" if it exists, it defines some rules. 
I did write some minimal rules that are mandatory, mainly for the parsing 
of OS headers. For example, it defines these constants :
-D__amigaos4__, -D__GNUC__ and -D__PPC__


Launch

Here I am explaining how to run splint trying to give you some advices.

To run splint in a shell, basically :

splint filetocheck.c

Note that "-D__amigaos4__" is mandatory for a correct parsing of proto files. 
The problem is that there are errors like "Function IDOS->Close called 
with 1 args, expects 2". This is certainly due to interface declarations.
If the program does not use explicit interface pointers, the error becomes 
"Unrecognized identifier: Close".

At the beginning I suggest you to add the command parameter "-weak" to set 
splint in a mode less strict :

splint -weak filetocheck.c


Limitations

- The problem of the number of parameters in function calls
- Do not support relative file path with parent directories like 
"splint //example.c". Just do "cd //" and "splint example.c" or use 
the absolute path. Fix that would need deeper changes and that's not 
a big constraint.
- Tests on code warnings are almost all good running the whole testsuite ... 
but it may be right enough for a normal behaviour. There is one spec warning 
for each test with this message : "LSL signature parsing: can't find file 
Work:splint/lib/CTrait.syms containing".