Development of 64-bit C/C++ applications

MISRA C: struggle for code quality and security

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A couple of years ago the PVS-Studio analyzer got its first diagnostic rules to check program code compliance with the MISRA C and MISRA C++ standards. We collected feedback and saw that our clients were interested in using the analyzer to check their projects for MISRA compliance. So, we decided to further develop the analyzer in this direction. The article covers the MISRA C/C++ standard and the MISRA Compliance report. It also shows what we already managed to do and what we plan to achieve by the end of the year.

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Did it have to take so long to find a bug?

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Have you ever wondered which type of project demonstrates higher code quality – open-source or proprietary? Our blog posts may seem to suggest that bugs tend to concentrate in open-source projects. But that’s not quite true. Bugs can be found in any project, no matter the manner of storage. As for the code quality, it tends to be higher in those projects where developers care about and work on it. In this small post, you will learn about a bug that took two years to fix, although it could have been done in just five minutes.

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PVS-Studio 7.14: intermodular analysis in C++ and plugin for JetBrains CLion

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The PVS-Studio team is increasing the number of diagnostics with each new release. Besides, we are improving the analyzer’s infrastructure. This time we added the plugin for JetBrains CLion. Moreover, we introduced intermodular analysis of C++ projects and speeded up the C# analyzer core.

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Part 28. C++11 and 64-bit Issues

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The time goes by and the programmers are already using the updated version of C++ language, which is called C++11. AT this point a lot of modernizations, described in the C++11 standard are supported by most of the compilers. Can these modernizations help a programmer to avoid 64-bit errors? You may find the answer by reading the article “C++11 and 64-bit Issues” Continue reading →

Part 26. Peculiarities of creating installers for the 64-bit environment

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When developing the 64-bit version of an application, you should also be very attentive to the issue of program distribution – you might encounter some peculiar problems when installing the program on a 64-bit operating system, and if you forget about them, you will get a non-working installation package. First of all you should understand that the program installer itself (the exe-file that launches the installation process) can technically be either a 32-bit application or a 64-bit one. Continue reading →

Part 25. Optimization of 64-bit programs

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Reducing amounts of memory being consumed

When a program is compiled in the 64-bit mode, it starts consuming more memory than its 32-bit version. This increase often stays unnoticed, but sometimes memory consumption may grow twice. The growth of memory consumption is determined by the following factors: Continue reading →

Part 24. Phantom errors

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We have finished studying the patterns of 64-bit errors and the last thing we will speak about, concerning these errors, is in what ways they may occur in programs.

The point is that it is not so easy to show you by an example, as in the following code sample, that the 64-bit code will cause an error when “N” takes large values: Continue reading →

Part 22. Pattern 14. Overloaded functions

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When porting a 32-bit program to a 64-bit platform, you may encounter changes in its logic related to the use of overloaded functions. If a function is overlapped for 32-bit and 64-bit values, the access to it with an argument of a memsize-type will be translated into different calls on different systems. This technique may be useful as, for example, in this code: Continue reading →