Comparison of static code analysis tools in Linux? [closed]

Answer 1

I have used splint a couple of times and found it too verbose: I disabled most of the warnings. I think that this tool may provide interesting results if you correctly annotate your code. Without code annotation, this tool is not very helpful.

I sometimes use sparse and consider it as a valuable tool. It provides a wrapper around gcc, called "cgcc". As a result, it is simple to run sparse on a program even if it contains many source files (export CC=cgcc and voilà). This program works best if you are analyzing Kernel source code.

As a sidenote, I also use pmccabe on a regular basis. pmccabe is not a static analyzer: it calculates cyclomatic complexity. It may help you find the most complex functions in your program. Those functions are likely to be error prone and hard to test.