This description is only valid for cxx plugin version 1.x

The cxx plugin supports feeding compiler warnings as violations into SonarQube. Here is a quick guide how to run the supported compilers and catch needed relevant output.

IMPORTANT: Quality rules have to be activated in order to enable the import of warnings. Please see Activate quality rules for more info.

To feed GCC warnings into SonarQube, make sure to:

1. Add the '-fdiagnostics-show-option' option in your GCC build options (CFLAGS, CPPFLAGS or similar)
2. Capture the warnings from your build into a file (e.g build.log) using shell redirections or similar
3. Set configuration properties, example:

sonar.cxx.gcc.reportPath=*.log
sonar.cxx.gcc.charset=UTF-8

If gcc outputs the column numbers

sonar.cxx.gcc.regex=(?<file>.*):(?<line>[0-9]+):[0-9]+:\\x20warning:\\x20(?<message>.*)\\x20\\[(?<id>.*)\\]

Else if gcc doesn't output the column numbers (e.g. -fno-show-column is set or gcc version 4.4.7)

sonar.cxx.gcc.regex=(?<file>.*):(?<line>[0-9]+):\\x20warning:\\x20(?<message>.*)\\x20\\[(?<id>.*)\\]

Hint: You have to use additional escape sequences (\-> \\) for the regex property in the configuration file!

4. Activate the rules from the rule repository "compiler-gcc"
5. Run the analysis

The compiler sensor consumes the warning messages available in the build log. Depending on the configuration properties there are more or less warnings available. Briefly these are the regular expressions that should be used, see details in next sections.

The format of the build log looks different for parallel project builds (MSBuild options /maxcpucount:xx) and the regular expression has to consider this.

Hint: You have to use additional escape sequences (\-> \\) for the regex property in the configuration file!

sonar.cxx.vc.regex=(.*>)?(?<file>.*)\\((?<line>\\d+),\\d+\\):\\x20warning\\x20(?<id>C\\d+):\\x20(?<message>.*)

Visual Studio settings

• To create the 'C/C++ Build Warnings C4001-C4999' you have to activate the following configuration properties. Open the project property page with Project\Properties. Select Configuration Properties\C/C++\General and set Warning Level to Level3 or Level4.

• Enable 'Code Analysis for C/C++ Warnings C6001-C28351'. This feature is available in Premium or Ultimate editions only. Select Configuration Properties\Code Analysis\General, activate Enable Code Analysis on Build. As default you can use Microsoft Native Recommended Rules.

• Open Tools\Options and set option for Project and Solutions\Build and Run to MSBuild Project build log verbosity = Detailed.

Create the LOG file from the command line

Visual Studio provides two tools to build and analyze a project from the command line. With both tools it is the easiest to redirect stdout to a LOG file.

[devenv.exe|msbuild.exe] ... > output.log

Additional both tools provide command line options to redirect the output to a file:

• Devenv example doing a solution rebuild and write the warnings to example.log.

rem VS2010
call "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"
devenv example.sln /rebuild Release /out example.log

• MSBuild example doing a project rebuild and write the warnings to example.log.

rem VS2010
call "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"
MSBuild.exe example.proj /t:rebuild /p:Configuration=Release;WarningLevel=3 /fileLogger /fileLoggerParameters:WarningsOnly;LogFile=example.log;Verbosity=detailed;Encoding=UTF-8

Retrieving compiler information from buildlog

Version 0.9.3 and above extracts includes, defines and compiler options from the build log automatically (sonar.cxx.compiler.reportPath). Starting with version 1.2.0 you have to use sonar.cxx.msbuild.reportPath.

This feature is enabled only if the produced log during compilation contains enough information (msbuild verbosity set to detailed or diagnostic). For example

msbuild.exe /v:Detailed  Solution.SLN > buildlog.log

and then

sonar.cxx.msbuild.reportPath=buildlog.log
sonar.cxx.msbuild.charset=UTF-8

will automate much of the plugin configuration, otherwise set using sonar.cxx.includeDirectories and sonar.cxx.defines.

This feature can be used in any version of Visual Studio and it is independent of the Code Analysis described in earlier sections.

SonarQube Configuration settings

To read the messages from the LOG file the following configuration settings have to be defined. The regular expression can be configured and must match to the format in the LOG file.

sonar.cxx.vc.reportPath=*.log
sonar.cxx.vc.charset=UTF-8
sonar.cxx.vc.regex=(.*>)?(?<file>.*)\\((?<line>\\d+)\\)\\x20:\\x20warning\\x20(?<id>C\\d+):(?<message>.*)

A typical log file contains compiler warnings as shown in the following excerpt:

Build started 26.02.2014 17:59:20.
     1>Project "D:\training-kit\plaza_common\Source\sample.dll.vcxproj" on node 3 (Rebuild target(s)).
     1>_PrepareForClean:
         Deleting file "..\..\..\bin\x86\Debug\sample\sample.tlog\pcvcom.lastbuildstate".
       InitializeBuildStatus:
         Creating "..\..\..\bin\x86\Debug\sample\sample.tlog\unsuccessfulbuild" because "AlwaysCreate" was specified.
       ClCompile:
         C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\bin\CL.exe /c /I..\..\..\boost\include ... (truncated) ...  stdafx.cpp
     1>c:\program files (x86)\microsoft visual studio 12.0\vc\include\string.h(55): warning C4995: 'memcpy': name was marked as #pragma deprecated
     1>c:\program files (x86)\microsoft visual studio 12.0\vc\include\string.h(74): warning C4995: 'memcpy': name was marked as #pragma deprecated
     1>c:\program files (x86)\microsoft visual studio 12.0\vc\include\string.h(112): warning C4995: 'strcpy': name was marked as #pragma deprecated

TFS builds with SonarQube MSBuild scanner

Please see some additional hints here discussion #616

To support capturing include and define knowledge from other build systems it is possible to utilize JSON Compilation Database Format Specification support. JSON Compilation Database file is used as intermediate format between tools needing information about build process. File contains list of compiled files and how they were compiled.

cxx plugin supports capturing of compiler defines (-D) and include configurations (-I) from compiler command lines. These settings are then only affecting analysis of specified file.

In below example hello.cpp is compiled with -DHELLO and world.cpp is compiled with -DWORLD:

[
  {
    "file" : "hello.cpp"
    "directory": "/home/user/build",
    "command": "/usr/bin/gcc -DHELLO -o hello hello.cpp"
  },
  {
    "file" : "world.cpp"
    "directory": "/home/user/build",
    "command": "/usr/bin/gcc -DWORLD -o world world.cpp"
  }
]

This specifies that HELLO define is only defined by cxx plugin when analyzing hello.cpp file. Similarly WORLD is defined only for world.cpp.

To improve define and include knowledge further the cxx plugin includes extension to define includes and defines for all unknown files (like header files) and then allow full definition of both compiler internal and external defines and includes with defines and includes fields. To define defines and includes for unknown files filename __global__ is used.

[
  {
    "file": "__global__",
    "defines": {
      "__ARM_ARCH": "7",
      "__UINT16_TYPE__": "short unsigned int",
      ...
    },
    "includes" : [
      "/opt/vendor/vendor-sdk/sysroots/x86_64-vendorsdk-linux/usr/lib/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi/gcc/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi/4.9.2/include",
      ...
    ]
  },
  {
    "file" : "hello.cpp"
    "directory": "/home/user/build",
    "command": "/usr/bin/gcc -DHELLO -o hello hello.cpp",
    "defines": {
      "__ARM_ARCH": "7",
      "__UINT16_TYPE__": "short unsigned int",
      "__STDC_HOSTED__": "1",
      "__GNUC__" : "4"
      "__SIZEOF_SHORT__": "2",
      "__INT_MAX__": "2147483647",
      ...
      "HELLO" : ""
    },
    "includes" : [
      "/opt/vendor/vendor-sdk/sysroots/x86_64-vendorsdk-linux/usr/lib/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi/gcc/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi/4.9.2/include",
      "/opt/vendor/vendor-sdk/sysroots/x86_64-vendorsdk-linux/usr/lib/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi/gcc/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi/4.9.2/include-fixed",
      "/opt/vendor/vendor-sdk/sysroots/cortexa8hf-vfp-neon-vendor-linux-gnueabi/usr/include/c++/4.9.2",
      "/opt/vendor/vendor-sdk/sysroots/cortexa8hf-vfp-neon-vendor-linux-gnueabi/usr/include/c++/4.9.2/arm-vendor-linux-gnueabi",
      ...
    ]
  }
]

To enable CXX analysis to utilize JSON compilation database support setting sonar.cxx.jsonCompilationDatabase needs to be defined in sonar-project.properties.

sonar.cxx.jsonCompilationDatabase=compile_commands.json

It is also possible for older versions of sonar_cxx to limit scanning of sources only to those specified in JSON compilation database file with setting sonar.cxx.scanOnlySpecifiedSources. This feature was removed from release 1.0.0:

sonar.cxx.scanOnlySpecifiedSources=True

Because this feature was removed, if you need to limit processing to just the files listed in the compilation file, you will need to further parse the json and use it to set properties such as sonar.sources, sonar.exclusions, etc.