I want to parse current c++ files in a project and list out all the methods/functions in it and then generate the function call and caller trees.
F.g. you can refer how doxygen generates the call tree.
I have checked gccxml but it doesn't list the functions called from another function.
Please suggest me some lightweight tools (open source) which I can use it.
thanks!
The static call tree isn't necessarily the runtime call tree. Callbacks and virtual functions muddy the water. So static analysis can only give you part of the answer.
The only way I've ever been able to get a reliable call tree was to run gprof on the compiled executable. The output can be massaged into a very accurate call tree.
gccxml, currently, essentially ignores function bodies (including calls to other functions). A good overview of C++ parsing options currently available is here -- not necessarily a bearer of good news, but recommended reading.
You mention Doxygen. Why not use that?
I probably misunderstood , but visual studio have something similar.
Right Click a function and select Call Browser.
It's impossible to provide a full call tree analysis for an application that's dependent on asynchronous event reception. This is way we have test. Even in the simplest cases where the application is fully deterministic this could be a relatively daunting task and I would argue provide marginal value. Then how would you analyze the results? To what effect?
Related
I need to define functions in c++ code to be user defined. Basically that he writes the function in form of a string which is exact c++ code, then use that function in the very next line of code.
I have tried to append output to a file which is imported, but it obviously failed
You simply cannot do it. C++ code can not be interpreted at run-time. You may want to try Qt/QML which will give an opportunity to run a javascript code or an entire QML file from network/string or any other method which can deliver your code to the host application.
I assume you are talking about a pure function such as a mathematical formula.
To my knowledge, what you ask is not possible without
a) writing your own parser, that effectively creates functions from strings or
b) using external libraries - a quick google search brought be to this library that seems to provide the functionality you are looking for. I have no personal experience with it, though.
As #Useless pointed out, "editing" the code after compilation is not intended in a compiled language as c++. This could be tricked by having a second code compiled and executed in the background; this, however, seems rather unelegant and would rely on additional threads, compilers and the operating system.
Given a set of public headers, and various test code that makes use of these headers, I need to generate a list of used/unused API calls.
I am working with a platform that can not easily have traditional code coverage at runtime, but my requirements are a bit simpler hopefully.
I only need this to occur statically, and it seems as if this should be an easily accomplished thing (Most IDE's show all available function calls). I haven't found an appropriate tool for this though.
Can anyone recommend one? Or point me to the specific term for what I am looking for?
Thank you
I wonder whether there is a tool for VS that can show me a call graph (that is, a diagram listing all possible execution paths) for a given C++ function. It would help in navigating a big code base, in cases where a function is called in only a few places.
For oft-called functions like printf it could simply say:
too many options...
Again I guess it is not really easy to make such tool so I wonder if it exists, but you know it seems possible to do it so you never know... :)
EDIT: I know about find all references, but that gives just call sites of the function, not the call site of the function that called the function that called the function...
EDIT: VS is 2010, but if necessary VS2012 is an option.
You mentioned that you know about finding all the references. Have you looked into viewing the Call Hierarchy? It's probably not your "dream method" but it does allow you to look at a function in terms of "calls to" and "calls from" the given function. The window also allows you to add multiple functions to view in a tree format. So basically you would tree up or down through the possible outcomes.
Right click on the desired method ( could be anywhere in the hierarchy ) =>
Select "View Call Hierarchy"
Note that if you can add more than one reference point to the window. Delete when needed
You could also use Ctrl+K or Ctrl+T
Another fine example, IMHO, of a disappointment in the differences between C++ and C# with VS. I think Code Maps would be just what you're looking for. Assuming of course you were working with Ultimate - but nope, not with C++.
There's no such feature in C++/MSVC, as far as I know.
However, there's AQTime profiler for windows that has "static analysis" option that (IF I remember correctly) scans compiled executable, generates call graph and shows you unreacheable functions.
If I remember correctly, AQtime integrates into visual studio (professional edition, afaik).
Unfortunately, this is a commercial profiler that costs around $500, and this feature is not available in trial version. Last time I used static analysis was 3..4 years ago and I don't exactly remember details at the moment (and I don't have access to AQTime anymore). Anyway, it is a specialized tool, so I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're optimizing code for speed 24/7.
Perhaps, by googling "static analysis", "code coverage" or researching other profilers you'll find somewhat similar tool that does the job for free.
Aside from that, doxygen can generate callgraphs for C++ code. In case of doxygen, you'll have to hunt for functions that are never called yourself.
Also, Visual Studio 2008 had a built-in caller graph feature (which, I think, uses intellisense). Basically, you right click any function and select "show callers" (or something like that), that'll open list of all functions (visual studio THINKS are calling your function) in a window. Because this feature was present in VS2008, it should be included in VS2010. However, it can't detect every caller for obvious reasons (virtual methods, callbacks, etc).
Maybe doxygen is the tool you are looking for. It provides the possibility to generate call graphs (showing all functions called by a specific function) and/or caller graphs(showing the functions that the function is directly or indirectly called by).
see: http://www.doxygen.nl/manual/diagrams.html
Take a look at Understand tool (http://www.scitools.com). It's great for drawing call graphs and control flow charts.Unfortunately, it's commercial.
You can resolve results after doing Symbol search. Just right click in your source and then select find all references that performs symbol search. Its explained in further details at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2009/11/17/improvements-to-find-all-references-in-visual-studio-2010.aspx
You can try CppDepend which give you the call graph inside VS and provides many features in its dependency graph.
Source Navigator is a tool that I have used and have been quite happy with on C++ projects. Again, it is not within the Visual Studio IDE, but it has some great advantages if you don't mind pressing Alt-Tab :-)
works with both C and C++ sources
is quite fast in it's indexing and searching; it's a pleasure to use, IMHO
is a visual tool
is a free and Open Source tool
See http://sourcenav.berlios.de/screenshots/ for some screenshots
In particular, you are looking for the Cross-Reference Browser:
"It can find every call of a function, or tell you everything a
particular function calls. It creates tree diagrams that show
essential relationships within the project's symbol database, such as
the function call hierarchy tree. You can traverse up and down the
hierarchy tree, as well as expand or restrict the tree. You can select
items in the hierarchy and display their Refers-to and Referred-by
relationships; these relationships are based on the "point-of-view" of
the selected symbol."
Though this example screenshot from the tutorial, "Using the Cross-Reference Browser" shows Referred-by relationships (using red arrows) for a class and not a function, the latter use case would be very similar. You can also browse what functions / methods are getting called from a function, and that would be a Refers-to relationship, shown using blue arrows instead of red.
Do give it a try! As I mentioned before, I have been a happy user of this tool; it's not very well-known, but is a good piece of software (that also stands as an example for how useful Tcl/Tk can be in the right hands).
I think you should be able to use VS Plugin - CodeGraph on your solution and look for the specific function you are looking for and go on from there. It does static analysis on your solution and generates a nice graph of the call flows. Check "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=YaobinOuyang.CodeAtlas". Hope this helps.
It is often a pattern that I wish to poll a file for changes (when it was last written). When the file does change from its previous value, I wish to execute some function. Something of the form.
(poll-for-changes file-str on-change-fx current-value)
where
file-str is just a string that specifies the files location
on-change-fx is the function that should be called when the file at file-str changes. Let us say that the on-change-fx should take the File object pointing to file-str as a argument.
current-value the current value of the file in milliseconds. You might set to 0 to guarantee that this function will run at least once, or to the actual value to only run this function when you actually detect a change.
I would just like this function implemented in the clearest, most concise, Clojurist way possible. Thank you.
If you're looking to poll a directory or files and act on it, I think watchtower is pretty good to look at.
Java 7 has a WatchService, which uses file system events to react to changes. In this case, you don't poll at all, but block on a future file event. I don't think there are any projects in Clojure that are out there leveraging that, although I spent some time toying with it to write a small library. The source for it is here
I don't claim my library is even complete, but it does use the Java 7 service, so you could use that for inspiration on your own project.
There are two approaches you could use here:
Use Java interop and the Java 7 WatchService API.
Inspect and learn from existing idiomatic, concise code (in this case by Stuart Sierra) that does something like you want. Note it also uses Java Interop.
I think option #1 is your best bet, and the implementation of the function should be straight forward. You will likely want to use doto and the -> and ->> macros to make the code more readable.
Nowadays I would probably try hara.io.watch first.
Otherwise there are many alternatives (as stated in the hara docs) :
clojure-watch
dirwatch
hawk
watchtower
java-watcher
panoptic
ojo
filevents
And some code can be extracted from :
lein-midje
ns-tracker
lazytest
You could also do what hara does and wrap java.nio.file.WatchService.
I have the following question and from a systems perspective want to know how to achieve this easily and efficiently.
Given a task 'abc' that has been built with debug information and a global variable "TRACE" that is normally set to 0, I would like to print out to file 'log' the address of each function that is called between the time that TRACE is set to 1 and back again to 0.
I was considering doing this through a front-loading / boot-strapping task that I'd develop which looks at the instructions for a common pattern of jump/frame pointer push, writing down the address and then mapping addresses to function names from the symbolic debug information in abc. There could be better system level ways to do this without a front-loader though, and I'm not sure what is most feasible.
Any implemented techniques out there?
One possibility is to preprocess the source before compiling it. This preprocessing would add code at the beginning of each function that would check the TRACE global and, if set, write to the log. As Mystagogue said, the compiler has preprocessor macros that expand to the name of the function.
You might also look at some profiling tools. Some of them have functionality close to what you're asking for. For example, some will sample the entire callstack periodically, which can tell you a lot about the code flow without actually logging every call.
Looking for a common prologue/epilogue won't work in the presence of frame-pointer omission and tail call optimization. Also, modern optimizers like to split functions into several chunks and merge common tail chunks of different functions.
There is no standard solution.
For Microsoft compiler, check out _penter and _pexit hooks. For GCC, look at -finstrument-functions option and friends.
Also, on x86 Windows you can use a monitor such as WinApiOverride32. It's primarily intended for monitoring DLL and system API calls, but you can generate a description file from your application's map file and monitor internal functions as well.
(Edited: added link to GCC option.)
Make sure you've looked into the __func__ or __FUNCTION__ predefined identifiers. They provide a string literal of the function/method name you are currently executing.