Static Code Analysis (SCA)

Support for static code analysis tools in Zephyr is possible through CMake.

The build setting ZEPHYR_SCA_VARIANT can be used to specify the SCA tool to use. ZEPHYR_SCA_VARIANT is also supported as environment variable.

Use -DZEPHYR_SCA_VARIANT=<tool>, for example -DZEPHYR_SCA_VARIANT=sparse to enable the static analysis tool sparse.

SCA Tool infrastructure

Support for an SCA tool is implemented in a sca.cmake file. The sca.cmake must be placed under SCA_ROOT/cmake/sca/tool/sca.cmake. Zephyr itself is always added as an SCA_ROOT but the build system offers the possibility to add additional folders to the SCA_ROOT setting.

You can provide support for out of tree SCA tools by creating the following structure:

<sca_root>/                 # Custom SCA root
└── cmake/
    └── sca/
        └── <tool>/         # Name of SCA tool, this is the value given to ZEPHYR_SCA_VARIANT
            └── sca.cmake   # CMake code that configures the tool to be used with Zephyr

To add foo under /path/to/my_tools/cmake/sca create the following structure:

/path/to/my_tools
         └── cmake/
             └── sca/
                 └── foo/
                     └── sca.cmake

To use foo as SCA tool you must then specify -DZEPHYR_SCA_VARIANT=foo.

Remember to add /path/to/my_tools to SCA_ROOT.

SCA_TOOL can be set as a regular CMake setting using -DSCA_ROOT=<sca_root>, or added by a Zephyr module in its module.yml file, see Zephyr Modules - Build settings

Compiler and linker launchers

An SCA tool that needs to observe or wrap the compilation and link commands does so by setting the CMAKE_<LANG>_COMPILER_LAUNCHER and CMAKE_<LANG>_LINKER_LAUNCHER variables from its sca.cmake. They must be set as normal variables, not as cache entries.

A launcher set this way replaces any launcher that was already configured, ccache included. A tool that is a transparent wrapper, meaning it runs the command it is given unmodified, may instead keep the previous launcher by appending it:

set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER_LAUNCHER ${my_wrapper} ${CMAKE_C_COMPILER_LAUNCHER})

Native SCA Tool support

The following is a list of SCA tools natively supported by Zephyr build system.