Contents
Settings: Specific Analyzer Settings
- Analysis Timeout
- No Noise
- Use Old Cpp Parser
- Report Disabled Rules
- Disable Template Instantiation Cpp
- Security Related Issues
- Dependency Cache Tracking Mode
- Intermodular Analysis Cpp
- Disable Incremental PCH Tracking
- Incremental Analysis Timeout
- MISRACVersion
- Perform Custom Build Step
- Perform TFVC Checkout
- Save File After False Alarm Mark
- Display False Alarms
- Enable False Alarms With Hash
- Disable Synchronization Of Suppress Files
- Integrated Help Language
- Use Offline Help
- Show Best Warnings Button
- Show Tray Icon
- Incremental Results Display Depth
- Trace Mode
- Automatic Settings Import
- Use Solution Folder As Initial
- Save Modified Log
- Source Tree Root
- Use Solution Dir As Source Tree Root
- Autoload Unreal Engine Log
The Specific Analyzer Settings tab contains additional advanced settings.
Analysis Timeout
This setting enables you either completely disable the analysis time limit or set a specific timeout after which the analysis of individual files stops with the V006. File cannot be processed. Analysis aborted by timeout error. Before changing this setting, we recommend reading the detailed error description at the link above. Timeouts often occur because the system is out of memory. In such cases, it is better to reduce the number of parallel threads instead of increasing the time limit. This can significantly improve performance, especially when you have many CPU cores but limited RAM.
No Noise
This setting completely disables the generation of Low Certainty (level 3) warnings. After restarting the analysis, the messages of this level disappear from the analyzer output.
You can disable the No Noise mode later. During the next analysis, all previously missing warnings will be available again.
Use Old Cpp Parser
This setting disables the new parser for the C++ analyzer and reverts to the old one. Enable this setting if you experience any issues with the C++ analyzer.
Report Disabled Rules
This setting enables the output of analyzer rule exceptions, which can be specified using comments in the .pvsconfig file.
Disable Template Instantiation Cpp
This setting disables the template parameter instantiation during the C++ code analysis. This reduces RAM usage but makes the analysis less thorough.
Security Related Issues
This setting enables the analyzer to highlight warnings related to potential security issues with additional markings in the SAST column of the analyzer report.
Dependency Cache Tracking Mode
This setting determines the mode of tracking source files in the dependency cache:
- ModifiedFilesOnly tracks only modifications to source files in the hash.
- ModifiedAndWarningsContainingFiles additionally tracks files with warnings found in previous analysis runs. The source file remains marked for analysis until it contains analyzer warnings.
- Disabled disables file tracking and dependency cache updating.
Intermodular Analysis Cpp
Note. This setting was removed in PVS-Studio 7.26. Please use the analysis start menu to run the intermodular analysis mode.
This setting enables the analyzer to consider not only information from the analyzed file, but also from the related files. This allows performing more in-depth and high-quality analysis. However, the analysis time increases.
This mode is relevant to C and C++ projects. C# projects provide the intermodular analysis by default.
Disable Incremental PCH Tracking
This setting disables incremental analysis of C and C++ source files affected by changes in the precompiled header file and its included header files. Changing this setting helps when the files are frequently modified and the incremental analysis takes too much time.
Changes made to this setting in the Visual Studio IDE take effect the next time you open the project or solution. If the analysis is performed via the PVS-Studio_Cmd console utility, the analyzer will use the new setting immediately.
Incremental Analysis Timeout
This setting enables specifying a time limit for incremental analysis. When the limit is reached, the analyzer stops processing files. All warnings detected up to that limit are displayed in the PVS-Studio window, along with an additional message stating that the analyzer did not have enough time to process all modified files. The report also includes statistics on the total number of files and how many of them were analyzed.
This setting is relevant only for working in the Visual Studio IDE.
MISRACVersion
This setting enables you to select the version of the MISRA standard. For C, versions 2012 and 2023 are available.
Perform Custom Build Step
This setting enables the execution of actions specified in the Custom Build Step section of a Visual Studio project file (.vcproj/.vcxproj). Note that the analyzer requires compilable code to function correctly. For example, if Custom Build Step is used to generate .h files before compilation, enable this setting and run the code before analyzing the project. If actions related to linking, for example, are performed at this step, they will not affect the analyzer results. The Custom Build Step actions are specified at the project level and are executed by PVS-Studio during the initial scanning of the project file tree. If this setting is enabled and its execution results in a non-zero exit code, the analysis of the corresponding project file will not start.
Perform TFVC Checkout
This setting allows automatically performing a checkout using Team Foundation Version Control Tool when editing files with the suppressed analyzer warnings (the .suppress files). Enabling it does not affect projects that are not under the TF version control system or added to the Visual Studio workspace.
If additional information is available, including information about errors, it appears in the PVS-Studio window. This setting is relevant only when working in the Visual Studio IDE.
Save File After False Alarm Mark
This setting enables marking a message as False Alarm that requires the modification of source code files. By default, the analyzer saves each source code file after adding the mark. However, if you prefer less frequent saves (for example, if the files are located on a different computer in a LAN), you can disable this setting.
Note. Marking false positives without saving the source files could result in data loss when closing the IDE.
Display False Alarms
This setting enables the display of messages marked as False Alarms in the PVS-Studio Output window. The change takes effect immediately, with no need to restart the analysis. When the setting is set to true, the FA indicator showing the number of False Alarms appears on the PVS-Studio Output window.
Enable False Alarms With Hash
This setting enables appending an additional hash code to the False Alarm mark. The hash code is evaluated from the content of the code line. If the line changes, warnings issued for this line are no longer considered False Alarms under the same hash.
Disable Synchronization Of Suppress Files
This setting disables automatic synchronization of suppress files between projects within the same solution.
By default, the synchronization of suppress files is enabled. If a source code file is used in multiple projects, and warnings from that file have been added to the suppress file of at least one project, the warnings will automatically be added to the suppress files of other projects when they are analyzed.
Integrated Help Language
This setting enables the selection of the language for integrated help regarding diagnostic rule messages. Click the message error code in the PVS-Studio Output window) and online documentation (PVS-Studio > Help > Open PVS-Studio Documentation (html, online), which you can also find on the website.
This setting does not change the language of the IDE plugin interface and messages issued by the analyzer.
Use Offline Help
The setting enables using offline help for diagnostic rule messages. Click the message error code in the PVS-Studio Output window.
Show Best Warnings Button
This setting enables the display of the Best button in the PVS-Studio interface. By default, it is enabled. You can find the Best button in the window with the analyzer warnings. Click the button to view the 10 most interesting analyzer warnings. To hide this button, set this parameter to False.
Show Tray Icon
This setting controls how PVS-Studio notifies users about analysis results. When the analysis finishes, if the PVS-Studio Output window contains error messages (they can be hidden by filters as false positives or by the names of checked files—such messages do not appear in the PVS-Studio window), the analyzer displays a pop-up notification in the Windows system tray. Clicking the notification or the PVS-Studio icon once opens the PVS-Studio Output window with the detected issues.
Incremental Results Display Depth
This setting defines how message levels are displayed in the PVS-Studio Output window for incremental analysis results. You can choose how many levels to display (only level 1, levels 1 and 2; or all three levels). The analyzer automatically applies the selected option after incremental analysis finishes. The Preserve_Current_Levels value keeps the current level settings unchanged.
This setting may be useful if you regularly switch between incremental and regular analysis modes. For example, if you accidentally disable level 1 warnings while reviewing a large regular analysis report, the incremental analysis results will be hidden too. Since incremental analysis runs in the background, that may lead to the loss of warnings about real issues the analyzer detected in that mode.
Trace Mode
The setting enables selecting a trace mode (logging of the program execution path) for PVS-Studio IDE extension packages (plugins for Visual Studio IDEs). There are several tracing verbosity levels (the Verbose mode is the most detailed one). When tracing is enabled, PVS-Studio automatically creates a .log file in the AppData\PVS-Studio directory (for example, c:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\PVS-Studio\PVSTrace2168_000.log). Each running IDE process will use a separate file to store its logging results.
Automatic Settings Import
This setting enables automatic importing of configuration files (.xml) from the %AppData%\PVS-Studio\SettingsImports\ directory. The import runs every time saved settings are loaded—for example, when you start Visual Studio or the command-line analyzer, or when you reset the settings. During import, flag-type options (true/false) and single-value settings (like strings) get replaced with the ones from SettingsImports, while multi-value settings (like excluded directories) get merged.
If the SettingsImports folder contains multiple .xml files, they are applied to the current settings in alphabetical order.
Use Solution Folder As Initial
By default, PVS-Studio suggests saving a report file (.plog) in the same folder as the current solution file.
Changing this setting restores the standard behavior of Windows file dialogs. In other words, the dialog will remember and use the last opened folder as the default.
Save Modified Log
This setting defines how the analyzer prompts you to save its report before starting a new analysis or loading another one, if the output window already contains new, unsaved, or modified results. Choosing Yes enables automatic saving of analysis results to the current log file (after you specify it once in the save dialog). Choosing No allows the IDE plugin to overwrite the existing results without saving them. The Ask_Always option (default) shows a save prompt every time.
Source Tree Root
By default, PVS-Studio issues warnings that contain absolute paths to the analyzed files. This setting enables specifying a root path segment that the analyzer automatically replaces with a special marker if the file path in a warning message begins with the specified root. For example, the absolute path to the C:\Projects\Project1\main.cpp file will be replaced with the |?|Project1\main.cpp relative path if C:\Projects\ is specified as root.
When handling the PVS-Studio log with relative file paths, the IDE plugin automatically replaces the |?| marker with this setting value. This setting enables managing the PVS-Studio report on any local machine with the access to verified sources, regardless of their location in the file system.
See the detailed description of the mode here.
Use Solution Dir As Source Tree Root
This setting enables or disables the mode of using the path to the folder containing the *.sln solution file as the SourceTreeRoot parameter.
Autoload Unreal Engine Log
This setting enables automatically loading the analyzer report generated from the Unreal Engine project analysis into the PVS-Studio output window.
This setting is relevant only in the Visual Studio IDE.
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