HOWTO -- traditional "listing" from GCC compiler

SaintDanBert · 02-24-2012, 11:57 AM

I need to create a "report" showing C/C++ source code with the
error and warning messages mixed with the source code. This was a
traditional source code "listing" in the ancient days. Thankfully,
the integrated development environment (IDE) has made those listings
a relic, but I need to create several for a presentation.

In addition to code and messages interspersed, these "listing" reports offered a cross reference showing each identifier and the source line
where they were declared followed by a list of lines where they were used.

I made a pass thru the GCC man page and did not find anything obvious. Can anyone explain how I might get the message+code report? What about the cross reference report as a nice-to-have?

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan
A really olde timer

Dark_Helmet · 02-24-2012, 03:22 PM

I think you'll need to be more specific on what you're looking for.

What you describe vaguely sounds like a report generated by a source code linter. Wikipedia has a page for static code analysis tools.

Or perhaps a report generated by code coverage tools.

The difference between the two being, of course, the code coverage requires one (or more) runs of the target executable. The report then displays which lines of the source code were exercised during the run(s). The linter is a static source code analysis without the need to execute the code under analysis.

To use a linter, you just download, install, and run. The code coverage is a little more involved. The "default" coverage tool is gcov (which should be included with your distribution's gcc package). You then add "--coverage" to your compile and link commands to generate the support files. Run the binary under analysis, and then use gcov to generate reports.

If neither of those are what you're after, then it would be helpful if you could provide the name of the program you used before that generated the report. Ideally, the name of the program and a sample report it generated would help track down what you need.

SaintDanBert · 02-25-2012, 07:52 AM

I'm familiar with various code analysis tools, and thanks for the reminder about those.
No, in days long past, the compiler had options to emit a "report file" that included
the source code with any compile time warnings or errors interspersed with the lines of code. More specifically, when line-N had some error, the report showed the errors
immediately following line-N in the code. Some even included cute pointers "----------^" to mark where in the line the error got detected.

Back in the days of batch processing, this was the only way one used compilers and the stack of paper report, was how you worked the code to correctness. I was hoping that there was some obscure (nee, "arcane") option to 'gcc' that would create a merged output. That would save me the time of doing my own merge by hand for this presentation.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

firstfire · 02-25-2012, 11:09 AM

Hi.

I did not find any suitable gcc option in the man page. But, it is linux, we may do almost anything using standard set of utilities.

How about something like

Code:

$ cat test-error.c 
int main(int)
{
        printf("Hello World!\n");
}
$ gcc test-error.c 2>&1| sed -r '/error:|warning:/{p;s/([^:]*):([0-9]+):.*/sed -n "\2p" "\1"/e; s/^/BAD LINE: /}'
test-error.c: In function ‘main’:
test-error.c:1:1: error: parameter name omitted
BAD LINE: int main(int)
test-error.c:3:2: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘printf’ [enabled by default]
BAD LINE:       printf("Hello World!\n");

It is not perfect, but works (at least for this simple example) and hopefully can be tailored to your needs. AWK or perl are probably better options if one need more sophisticated error processing.

Edit: Given sed command uses GNU sed specific `e' flag to the s///.
Edit 2: Previous command fails if erroneous file is not in the current directory. The following may (and sometimes probably may not) solve this problem:

Code:

$ make 2>&1 | sed -r '/error:|warning:/{p;s/([^:]*):([0-9]+):.*/sed -n "\2p" $(find . | grep "\1")/e; s/^/BAD LINE: /}'

Dark_Helmet · 02-25-2012, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintDanBert

No, in days long past, the compiler had options to emit a "report file" that included the source code with any compile time warnings or errors interspersed with the lines of code.

My apologies. I've never encountered a compiler that generated that report. The closest thing I have ever come to that would be at my old job--using some commercially-provided/proprietary "compiler"/utility. I put compiler in quotes because my old job was authoring hardware description in Verilog. So, it was not a compiler in the typical software sense.

The only thing else I could suggest is the route firstfire suggested. Though, I'm not trying to be a bandwagon helper