C++ Core Check is Microsoft’s static analysis tool that enforces the rules from the C++ Core Guidelines, which is maintained by the C++ Foundation. This post is to provide a snapshot of the C++ Core Guidelines coverage that C++ Core Check offers.

For background, the C++ team introduced C++ Core Check in December 2015 as part of Visual Studio 2015 Update 1. At the time of its release, C++ Core Check offered rules from the Bounds profile and Type profile with the promise of the Lifetimes profile to follow.

The C++ team has been expanding C++ Core Check’s coverage over the last five years. We have added more rules into the existing Type, Bounds, and Lifetimes profiles and have expanded into other areas of the C++ Core Guidelines, which you can see in the tables at the bottom of the post. For a more detailed view into the growth and evolution of C++ Core Check, see the other posts in our blog tagged “CppCoreCheck”.

The C++ Core Guidelines is an ever-evolving document that currently contains 482 rules, however only 263 of these provide guides that are enforceable by static analysis (Enforceable Set). At the time of writing, C++ Core Check covers 67 rules from the Enforceable Set. We are actively expanding the coverage as well as fixing issues raised on the Developer Community page.

1 This excludes rules that are philosophical, code-style based rules, rules marked as “impossible to enforce”, or those that are meant to be interpreted and enforced by each codebase’s maintainers.

#c++ #code analysis #cppcorecheck #static analysis