Static analysis is the technique in which on checks the code for patterns linked to known bugs. Using this technique is less time consuming than a code review, though, its checks are only limited to those programmed in the tool.
Checks can include the incorrect semi-colon behind the if-statement (if (var);) till advanced graph algorithms which determine if a variable is not initialized.
Enabling static analysis is easy, the most simplistic version is already build-in in your compiler:
[clang++ -Wall -Weverything -Werror ...](<https://clang.llvm.org/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html>)[g++ -Wall -Weverything -Werror ...](<https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Warning-Options.html>)[cl.exe /W4 /WX ...](<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/compiler-option-warning-level>)If you enable these options, you will notice that each compiler will find bugs the others don’t and that you will get errors on techniques which might be valid or valid in a specific context. while (staticAtomicBool); might be acceptable even if while (localBool); ain’t.
So unlike code review, you are fighting a tool which understands your code, tells you a lot of useful bugs and sometimes disagrees with you. In this last case, you might have to suppress the warning locally.
As the options above enable all warnings, they might enable warnings you don’t want. (Why should your code be C++98 compatible?) If so, you can simply disable that specific warning:
clang++ -Wall -Weverything -Werror -Wno-errortoaccept ...g++ -Wall -Weverything -Werror -Wno-errortoaccept ...cl.exe /W4 /WX /wd<no of warning>...Where compiler warnings assist you during development, they slow down compilation quite a bit. That is why you might not always want to enable them by default. Either you run them by default or you enable some continuous integration with the more expensive checks (or all of them).
If you decide to have some continuous integration, the use of other tools ain’t such a stretch. A tool like clang-tidy has an list of checks which covers a wide range of issues, some examples:
- Prevention of slicing
- Asserts with side effects
- Misleading indentation
- Check identifier naming