Lint, the best thing for your C/C++ code

I was first introduced to PC-Lint at my old company, after complaining about code style and the state of the software after having warnings turned off for years to a co-worker.  I then spent a few months evaluating the software and removing bugs from our system before getting the sign off to purchase licenses for the team.

The best part was finding odd-case errors, fixing them, and later reviewing customer crashes and observing, Oh I’ve fixed that already. Nothing better to say to the management types who love to rush products out the door.

Anyway in our current C++ code base I have been removing large numbers of warnings (and solved some corner case bugs), and now have team buy-in. It’s the most beautiful thing to see the warning count drop, and read check-in comments about warning removal.

On Friday I pulled out the trusty PC-Lint again, but was not sure how best to run this beast of a tool against a Visual Studio project/solution. Enter Visual Lint, a fantastic integration piece of software.

I can see a few more purchase orders in the near future.

Comments:

Matt 2007-10-08 10:55:41

Good thinking! Anything that helps clean up this ‘orrible messy code is good. Keep up the good work. Matt :)