A Beginner’s Guide to Static Code Analyzers
When building products, we always want the speed of development to be faster and also want our products to be reliable. To ensure reliability, the best options are manual end-to-end testing or automated testing. Tests are most of the time tiring to set up and this tends to reduce the speed of development.
In the development lifecycle of any product, static code analysis makes testing easier. They are not a replacement for end-to-end testing tools, but they ensure some level of reliability even without the application of the real tests. They usually come up before software testing.
What are Static Code Analyzers?
Static Code Analyzers are tools that do white-box testing whereby they inspect the code before it is executed or compiled. They do this to discover errors during development. The errors identified could be syntax errors, styling errors, security vulnerabilities, or coding errors that do not meet standards.
These tools also known as SAST, scan the application (manually or automatically) while the application is being worked on, and at the same time indicate warnings and errors.
For these analyzers to be effective, they must have a clear understanding of the structure and internals of the codebase they are working on. When testing applications (for example, end-to-end tests), you would need to explicitly state all areas the tests should cover. This can result in missing out a few parts of the application.
Although static code analyzers are not the best determinants of a reliable application and tests can be more effective, these tools can scan through the entire codebase to discover errors faster than tests would.
Benefits of Static Code Analyzers
Here are a few of the things code analyzers do:
- Ensure increased code quality
- Discover and provide insights on security vulnerabilities in dependencies
- Serve as testing tools that catch syntax errors
- Faster compared to reviewing code manually
- Provide deep analysis (as stated earlier) compared to tests
- Less prone to error, compared to manual code reviews
How Do Static Code Analyzers Work
As stated earlier, the analyzers must have a full understanding of the internal workings of the application and the tools used. The programming language used serves as a great determinant of how the application works.
After writing the codes, the files pass through the analyzer. The analyzers would scan through every line of code and point out errors based on multiple sets of rules that have been specified. Some analyzers also provide clear insights on resolving the errors discovered.
Examples of Static Code Analyzers
They are many, but let’s look at a few:
- Klocwork
Klocwork is a Static Code Analyzer for C, C++, C#, and Java programming languages. Klockwork helps to identify software security, quality, and reliability issues. It also enforces compliance with coding rules and standards.
It can also be integrated into CI/CD pipelines. With this, your source code is analyzed before the build process and if there are any errors, the build process does not continue (saving up resources) and you are immediately notified to take action.
2. CodeScene
CodeScene discovers code quality issues based on trends in how the system evolves. It can also be integrated into CI/CD pipelines and Pull Requests to get early warnings on code health issues.
CodeScene performs behavioral code analysis based on revision control data. It can analyze C, C++, C#, Java, Groovy, JavaScript, TypeScript and many other programming languages.
3. Coverity
Coverity supports free detection and fixing of code quality and security issues in Java, C/C++, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, and Python programming languages.
With Coverity, you can easily detect errors (which are clearly explained) on affected lines of code, thereby making it easy to fix them.
Also, Coverity can be integrated with GitHub actions, giving you a CI/CI pipeline to ensure you deliver reliable applications.
How to Choose a Static Code Analyzer
There are many analyzers out there and more are being created in a bid to make them more powerful and effective than others. Here are a few things to consider to successfully choose the right tool for your application:
- The programming language. Different tools are created for different programming languages. Hence, you must pick the right analyzer for your application.
- Coding Rules. Different tools are configured to work with specific coding rules. Some tools also give the option to extend or customize the rules. You have to understand the options a tool presents so as to get the best of it in building reliable applications.
- The ease of configuration. You wouldn’t want to spend a huge amount of time trying to configure the tool. From the demos of the tools, you can determine how easy it is to set up for your application.
Conclusion
In this article, you learned what Static Code Analyzers, the benefits they offer, how they work, some examples of the several analysis tools that exist, and few guidelines on choosing an analysis tool.
Static Code Analyzers are a great start to testing your code and ensuring reliable applications because they help to discover coding errors on time in the development process.
