Verifying projects utilizing Marmalade SDK with PVS-Studio analyzer

Mar 19 2012

Author: Paul Eremeev

Marmalade SDK (which was previously called AirPlaySDK) is a cross-platform SDK which allows the development of multi-platform applications for such mobile platforms, as iOS, Android, Symbian and several others.

Marmalade SDK supports the development inside Visual Studio IDE by generating regular Visual C++ project files. However, such projects do not call cl.exe, the Visual C++ compiler, directly. Instead, they utilize a special wrapper (also named cl.exe) which is added to the PATH variable through IDE settings (for Visual Studio versions prior to 2010) or project settings (for Visual Studio 2010 and later versions) VC++ Directories/Executable Directories. In turn, this wrapper calls the native Visual C++ compiler, appending and/or modifying several compilation arguments defined inside Visual C++ project in the process.

But to verify source files, the PVS-Studio analyzer calls the preprocessor (cl.exe or clang) directly. PVS-Studio receives its' required compilation arguments straight from project files through the IDE API which leads to compilation errors in case one of such Marmalade SDK generated project files is being verified because SDK header files do require the definitions which are included in its' compiler wrappers.

As a workaround to check Marmalade SDK projects with PVS-Studio, the project's compilation arguments could be modified manually by including some of these wrapper arguments into them. To prevent potential conflicts when compiling the project afterwards, it is preferable to create a separate build configuration in the Configuration Manager for this project (for example, Debug_PVS_Studio, by duplicating the Debug configuration). These changes should be made to this new configuration:

Adding the /X compiler argument (Ignores the standard include directory)
Adding the define symbol __S3E_CL_WRAPPER
Renaming the define symbol I3D_ARCH_ARM into the I3D_ARCH_X86

Before launching PVS-Studio, it is advised to set the preprocessing mode as 'Visual C++' (PVS-Studio->Options->Common Analyzer Settings->Preprocessor).