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The original name of this program was "C++check", but it was later changed to "Cppcheck".

Despite the name, Cppcheck is designed for both C and C++.

A manual is available online.

Cppcheck is a project with limited resources.

To monitor for stability, performance and regression we are analyzing the available source code of Debian packages with our latest development code and compare the results with the latest stable release.

You can help with this by donating CPU time (1 core or as many as you like) and bandwidth.

It is as simple as running a shell script.

TODO: describe what the script does

You need a Linux (or WSL) shell (MacOS should work as well) with Python 3.x, Git and some common (development) tools (the script will tell you which) installed.

NOTE: This will constantly and fully utilize the specified amount of cores while the script is running. It will also constantly fetch the sources which will be analyzed from a remote server (some of the packages are hundreds of megabytes in size).
If your resources and bandwidth are limited and/or would inflict certain costs on you (because of high energy prices or since you have to pay based on your data usage) you should probably not contribute.

NOTE: The script will store data in the temporary folder which will be removed if the script is exited cleanly. Some of the data is to perform the actual work and others to provide a faster start-up time. Any leftovers can be safely removed. You can persistent the data by adding the --persistent switch.

bash -c "$(wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danmar/cppcheck/refs/heads/main/tools/donate.sh)"

The bandwidth used can be limited by adding --bandwidth-limit= to the script invocation (see --limit-rate=amount on https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/html_node/Download-Options.html for possible values).

The script can be stopped at any time with CTRL+C.

Cppcheck requires a C++ compiler with (partial) C++11 support. Minimum required versions are GCC 5.1 / Clang 3.5 / Visual Studio 2015.

To build the GUI application, you need to use the CMake build system.

When building the command line tool, PCRE is optional. It is used if you build with rules.

There are multiple compilation choices:

• CMake - cross platform build tool
• Windows: Visual Studio
• Windows: Qt Creator + MinGW
• GNU make
• GCC (g++)
• Clang (clang++)

The minimum required Python version is 3.6.

The minimum required version is CMake 3.5.

Example, compiling Cppcheck with cmake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

If you want to compile the GUI you can use the flag. -DBUILD_GUI=ON

For rules support (requires pcre) use the flag. -DHAVE_RULES=ON

For release builds it is recommended that you use: -DUSE_MATCHCOMPILER=ON

For building the tests use the flag. -DBUILD_TESTS=ON

Using cmake you can generate project files for Visual Studio,XCode,etc.

For single-configuration generators (like "Unix Makefiles") you can generate and build a specific configuration (e.g. "RelWithDebInfo") using:

mkdir build_RelWithDebInfo
cd build_RelWithDebInfo
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo ..
cmake --build . --config RelWithDebInfo

For multi-configuration generators (like "Visual Studio 17 2022") the same is achieved using:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --config RelWithDebInfo

Use the cppcheck.sln file. The file is configured for Visual Studio 2019, but the platform toolset can be changed easily to older or newer versions. The solution contains platform targets for both x86 and x64.

To compile with rules, select "Release-PCRE" or "Debug-PCRE" configuration. pcre.lib (pcre64.lib for x64 builds) and pcre.h are expected to be in /externals then. A current version of PCRE for Visual Studio can be obtained using vcpkg.

If you do not wish to use the Visual Studio IDE, you can compile cppcheck from the command line the following command.

msbuild cppcheck.sln

Install MSYS2 to get GNU toolchain with g++ and gdb (https://www.msys2.org/). Create a settings.json file in the .vscode folder with the following content (adjust path as necessary):

{
    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\msys64\\usr\\bin\\bash.exe",
    "terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": [
        "--login",
    ],
    "terminal.integrated.env.windows": {
        "CHERE_INVOKING": "1",
        "MSYSTEM": "MINGW64",
    }
}

Run "make" in the terminal to build cppcheck.

For debugging create a launch.json file in the .vscode folder with the following content, which covers configuration for debugging cppcheck and misra.py:

{
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "cppcheck",
            "type": "cppdbg",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/cppcheck.exe",
            "args": [
                "--dump",
                "${workspaceFolder}/addons/test/misra/misra-test.c"
            ],
            "stopAtEntry": false,
            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
            "environment": [],
            "externalConsole": true,
            "MIMode": "gdb",
            "miDebuggerPath": "C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/gdb.exe",
            "setupCommands": [
                {
                    "description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
                    "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
                    "ignoreFailures": true
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "name": "misra.py",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/addons/misra.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/addons/test/misra/misra-test.c.dump"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The PCRE dll is needed to build the CLI. It can be downloaded here: http://software-download.name/pcre-library-windows/

Simple, unoptimized build (no dependencies):

make

The recommended release build is:

make MATCHCOMPILER=yes FILESDIR=/usr/share/cppcheck HAVE_RULES=yes CXXFLAGS="-O2 -DNDEBUG -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused-function"

Flags:

1. MATCHCOMPILER=yes Python is used to optimise cppcheck. The Token::Match patterns are converted into C++ code at compile time.

2. FILESDIR=/usr/share/cppcheck Specify folder where cppcheck files are installed (addons, cfg, platform)

3. HAVE_RULES=yes Enable rules (PCRE is required if this is used)

4. CXXFLAGS="-O2 -DNDEBUG -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused-function" Enables most compiler optimizations, disables cppcheck-internal debugging code and enables basic compiler warnings.

If you just want to build Cppcheck without dependencies then you can use this command:

g++ -o cppcheck -std=c++11 -Iexternals -Iexternals/simplecpp -Iexternals/tinyxml2 -Iexternals/picojson -Ilib cli/*.cpp lib/*.cpp externals/simplecpp/simplecpp.cpp externals/tinyxml2/*.cpp

If you want to use --rule and --rule-file then dependencies are needed:

g++ -o cppcheck -std=c++11 -lpcre -DHAVE_RULES -Ilib -Iexternals -Iexternals/simplecpp -Iexternals/tinyxml2 cli/*.cpp lib/*.cpp externals/simplecpp/simplecpp.cpp externals/tinyxml2/*.cpp

mingw32-make

If you encounter the following error with MATCHCOMPILER=yes you need to specify your Python interpreter via PYTHON_INTERPRETER.

process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, which python3, ...) failed.
makefile:24: pipe: No error
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, which python, ...) failed.
makefile:27: pipe: No error
makefile:30: *** Did not find a Python interpreter.  Stop.

1. Create an empty project file / makefile.
2. Add all cpp files in the cppcheck cli and lib folders to the project file / makefile.
3. Add all cpp files in the externals folders to the project file / makefile.
4. Compile.

sudo apt-get install mingw32
make CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++ LDFLAGS="-lshlwapi" RDYNAMIC=""
mv cppcheck cppcheck.exe

Besides building yourself on the platform of your choice there are also several ways to obtain pre-built packages.

Official packages maintained by the Cppcheck team:

• (Windows) An official Windows installer is available via the official Cppcheck SourceForge page: https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io/.
• (Windows) Official builds of the current development versions are available via the release-windows workflow. They are built nightly for the main branch and for each commit for release branches. As these are development versions please refrain from using these in production environments!
  • A portable package (i.e. does not require installation) is available as the portable artifact. This is still a work-in-progress - see https://trac.cppcheck.net/ticket/10771 for details.
  • An installer is available via the installer artifact.
• (Multi-Platform) A premium version with additional features provided by the original author of Cppcheck is available for purchase via https://www.cppcheck.com/.

Unofficial packages not maintained by the Cppcheck team but their respective packagers:

• (Windows) An portable package is available via https://portableapps.com/apps/development/cppcheck-portable.
• (Windows / Outdated) A package is available via https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/cppcheck.
• (Windows / Outdated) A package is available via https://winget.run/pkg/Cppcheck/Cppcheck.
• (Windows / Outdated) A package is available via https://osdn.net/projects/sfnet_cppcheck/.
• (Linux/Unix) Many major distros offer Cppcheck packages via their integrated package managers (yum, apt, pacman, etc.). See https://pkgs.org/search/?q=cppcheck for an overview.
• (Linux/Unix) Unless you are using a "rolling" distro, it is likely that they are not carrying the latest version. There are several external (mainly unsupported) repositories like AUR (ArchLinux), PPA (ubuntu), EPEL (CentOS/Fedora) etc. which might provide up-to-date packages.
• (Linux/Unix / Outdated) The Canonical Snapcraft packages (https://snapcraft.io/cppcheck / https://snapcraft.io/cppcheckgui) are unmaintained and contain very old (development) versions. Please refrain from using them! See https://trac.cppcheck.net/ticket/11641 for more details.
• (MacOS) A package is available via Homebrew (brew). See https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/cppcheck.
• (MacOS) A package is available via https://ports.macports.org/port/cppcheck/
• (Multi-Platform) A package is available via https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/cppcheck.
• Packages are also available from various download portals (mainly the Windows installer - sometimes re-packaged).

Note: This is list is purely informational and listed in no particular order.

Note: Please always try to obtain the package from the primary official source of your operating system/distro first and make sure you are getting the latest released version.

Note: Some issues might be related to additional patches carried by the builds in these packages or the packaging itself. In that case issues might need to be reported to the respective project.

https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io/