How to get Coverity static analysis compatible with C++0x standard?

Question

I am using a Wind River Compiler 4 (gcc (C) and g++ (C++)) and it compiles all my projects without any problems. Now I have to use Coverity Static Analysis to check my code. I have configured the specific compilers. For the C-Code (gcc) there are no problems and I can run the analysis, but for the C++-Code (g++) I got a lot of errors:

.../c++config.h", line 214: error #40:
    expected an identifier
inline namespace __gnu_cxx_ldbl128 { }
       ^

.../c++config.h", line 214: error #326:
    inline specifier allowed on function declarations only
inline namespace __gnu_cxx_ldbl128 { }
^

.../c++config.h", line 214: error #65:
    expected a ";"
inline namespace __gnu_cxx_ldbl128 { }
                                   ^
.../include/string.h", line 76: error #312:
    cannot overload functions distinguished by return type alone
extern __const void *memchr (__const void *__s, int __c, size_t __n)
                     ^

.../include/string.h", line 116: error #312:
    cannot overload functions distinguished by return type alone
extern "C++" __const void *memchr (__const void *__s, int __c, size_t __n)
                     ^

It seem to be some C++11 specific features like the inline namespace but the code doesn't use these features. The errors above are produced with a HelloWorld-Code:

#include "stdio.h"
#include "util.h"
#include <string>
#include "string.h"

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    printf("Hello World, C++ version: %d.%d.%d\r\n",__GNUC__,__GNUC_MINOR__,__GNUC_PATCHLEVEL__);

    return 0;
}

I have tried to set the c++ standard with the g++ option

-std=c++98

but the result doesn't changed.

The Test-Code is in a big build hierarchy but the steps for Coverity are like this:

1. target and env set (Wind River 4 Linux)
2. make clean
3. cov-configure with compiler dir and type
4. cov-build with the correct "make all" command that works alone
5. cov-analyze
6. if (no_error) cov-commit-defects

I have also configured Coverity to replace all "inline namespace" with "namespace" during the cov-build (--ppp-translator replace/inline namespace/namespace). The inline errors disappeared but it produces more of this overload errors and no succecfully build. Also tried to remove the "C++" the same way but didn't work there are always more errors.

Does anybody have an idea what is the problem here? And how can I get the Coverity build without errors? Maybe I can configure Coverity to ignore c++ standard headers but I don't now how?

Answer 1

Workaround by Coverity Support:

The inline namespace is a known bug in Coverity. To bypass it, configure Coverity with the following additional options (in the config file):

  <begin_command_line_config></begin_command_line_config> 
  <add-arg>--ppp_translator</add_arg> 
  <add_arg>replace/inline namespace ([_a-zA-Z0-9]*)\s+\{\s*\}/namespace $1 { } using namespace $1;</add_arg> 
</options>

After that we got some other errors but they seem to belong all to string definitions. Now add a Coverity define at the beginning of coverity-compiler-compat.h (also in the config dir):

#define __COVERITY_NO_STRING_NODEFS__

After these changes the cov-build runs without errors and the analysis can be started.

Answer 2

Your library implementation is using C++11. Presumably there are #ifdefs that remove all the C++11 stuff when you do call g++ with -std=c++98 but it seems that however Coverity is integrated with g++, it's not defining the same things that are necessary to avoid the C++11 features.

You should figure out what the macros that gcc uses around that C++11 code are and then make sure that Coverity is defining them appropriately as well when it analyzes your project.

Answer 3

This error says it quite clearly:

inline specifier allowed on function declarations only

Is there a reason the namespace is inline? While I don't have the specification available, so I can't tell you if it's allowed or not. (That the compiler allows it may be a bug in GCC.)

Try to remove that inline and Coverity will hopefully by happy.

It seems that Coverity hasn't been updated with the some C++11 features, like inline namespaces.