PVS-Studio: No compilation units were found

Question

I'm using PVS-Studio in docker image based on ubuntu:18.04 for cross-compiling a couple of files with arm-none-eabi-gcc. After doing pvs-studio-analyzer trace -- .test/compile_with_gcc.sh strace_out file is successfully created, it's not empty and contains calls to arm-none-eabi-gcc.

However pvs-studio-analyzer analyze complains that "No compilation units were found". I tried using --compiler arm-none-eabi-gcc key with no success.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The problem was in my approach to compilation. Instead of using a proper build system, I used a wacky shell script (surely, I thought, using a build system for 3 files is an overkill, shell script won't hurt anybody). And in that script I used grep to redefine one constant in the source - kinda like that: grep -v -i "#define[[:blank:]]\+${define_name}[[:blank:]]" ${project}/src/main/main.c | ~/opt/gcc-arm-none-eabi-8-2018-q4-major/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc -o main.o -xc

So compiler didn't actually compiled a proper file, it compiled output of grep. So naturally, PVS-Studio wasn't able to analyze it.

TL;DR: Don't use shell scripts as build system.

Answer 2

We have reviewed the stace_out file. It can be handled correctly by the analyzer, if the source files and compilers are located by the absolute path in the stace_out file. We have a suggestion what might help you. You can "wrap" the build command in a call to pvs-studio-analyzer -- trace and pvs-studio-analyzer analyze and place them inside your script (compile_with_gcc.sh). Thus, the script should start with the command:

pvs-studio-analyzer trace --

and end with the command:

pvs-studio-analyzer analyze

This way we will make sure that the build and analysis were started at the same container run. If the proposed method does not help, please describe in more detail, by commands, the process of building the project and running the analyzer. Also tell us whether the container reruns between the build and the formation of strace_out, and the analysis itself. It would also help us a lot if you ran the pvs-studio-analyzer command with the optional --dump-log flag and provided it to us. An example of a command that can be used to do this:

pvs-studio-analyzer analyze --dump-log ex.log

Also, it seems that it is not possible to quickly solve the problem and it is probably more convenient to continue the conversation via the feedback form on the product website.