Articles for developers

[Thunderbolt]

Andrey Karpov. The forgotten problems of 64-bit programs development.
Annotation. Though the history of 64-bit systems development makes more than a decade, the appearance of 64-bit version of OS Windows raised new problems in the sphere of development and testing applications. In the article there are considered some mistakes connected with 64-bit C/C++ code development to Windows. The reasons are explained according to which these mistakes didn't find their reflection in the articles devoted to the migration tasks and are unsatisfactorily detected by the majority of static analyzers.

Andrey Karpov, Evgeniy Ryzhkov. The essence of the code analysis library VivaCore.
Annotation. The article tells developers about VivaCore library, preconditions of its creation, its possibilities, structure and scope of use. This article was written simultaneously with the development of VivaCore library and that's why some of the details of the final realization may differ from the features described here. But this won't prevent the developers from getting acquainted with the general work principles of the library, mechanisms of analysis and processing of C and C++ source code.

Andrey Karpov, Evgeniy Ryzhkov. 20 issues of porting C++ code on the 64-bit platform.
Annotation. Program errors occurring while porting C++ code from 32-bit platforms on 64-bit ones are observed. Examples of the incorrect code and the ways to correct it are given. Methods and means of the code analysis which allow to diagnose the errors discussed, are listed.

Andrey Karpov. Problems of testing 64-bit applications.
Annotation. The article observes some questions related to testing the 64-bit software. Some difficulties which a developer of resource-intensive 64-bit applications may face and the ways to overcome them are described.

Andrey Karpov, Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Adaptation of the technology of the static code analyzer for developing parallel programs.
Annotation. In the article the question of use of the static code analyzers in modern parallel program development processes is considered. Having appeared in 70-80s as an addition to compilers, the static analyzers stopped to be popular with the developers in 90s. The reason was probably the increase of the errors diagnostics quality by the compilers. But in 2000s the interest to the static code analyzers started to increase again. It is explained by the fact that new static code analyzers were created, which started to detect quite difficult errors in programs. If the static code analyzers of the past made it possible, for example, to detect an uninitialized variable, modern static code analyzers tend to detect an unsafe access to data from several threads. The modern tendency of static code analyzers development became their use for diagnosing errors in parallel programs. In the work the situations are considered, where the use of such tools makes it possible to considerably simplify the process of creating parallel program solutions.

Andrey Karpov. 64-bits for C++ Developers: from /Wp64 to Viva64.
Annotation. The development of the 64-bit solutions market has given some new tasks in the field of their verification and testing. The article describes one of such tools - Viva64. It's a lint-like static code analyzer assigned for exposure of errors related with the peculiarities of the 64-bit platforms. The prerequisites for the creation of such an analyzer and its connection with the "Detect 64-Bit Portability Issues" regime in C++ compiler Visual Studio 2005 are covered in the article.

Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Driver Development for Windows 64-bit.
Annotation. Questions concerned with the release of drivers for 64-bit versions of Windows are considered in this article. Some typical problems and the ways of their solutions are listed in the article as well as tools which simplify the process of drivers developing.

Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Viva64: what is it and for whom is it meant?
Annotation. This short paper is a quick overview of the Viva64 project.

Vladimir Elesin. Application port to 64-bit platforms or never cackle till your egg is laid.
Annotation. So, is it really necessary to port the applications to the 64-bit platforms? And if the decision of the porting is made, then by what means can it be done with the least time and financial costs?

Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Peculiarities of the Development of 64-bit Applications.
Annotation. What did programmers get when 64-bit systems came to power? Besides the numerous advantages described in many advertising articles, programmers got the whole bunch of brainteasers, puzzles and even traps. Everyone who wants to get real advantages of using 64-bit systems has to face these ones.

Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Some examples of the 64-bit code errors.
Annotation. While porting 32-bit software to 64-bit systems there may appear some errors in the code of applications which were written in C++ language. The cause for these hides in the alteration of the base data types (to be more exact, in the relations between them) with the new hardware platform.

Andrey Karpov, Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Static code analysis for verification of the 64-bit applications.
Annotation. The coming of 64-bit processors to the PC market causes a problem which the developers have to solve: the old 32-bit applications should be ported to the new platform. After such code migration an application may behave incorrectly. The article is elucidating question of development and appliance of static code analyzer for checking out of the correctness of such application. Some problems emerging in applications after recompiling in 64-bit systems are considered in this article as well as the rules according to which the code check up is performed.

Andrey Karpov. Installation of PC-Lint and its using in Visual Studio 2005.
Annotation. The article is devoted to the first acquaintance with the PC-Lint 8.0 static analyzer of C++ code. The process of the tool installation and its initial setting is described.

Andrey Karpov. The use of the code analysis library OpenC++: modifications, improvements, error corrections.
Annotation. The article may be interesting for developers who use or plan to use OpenC++ library (OpenCxx). The author tells about his experience of improving OpenC++ library and modifying the library for solving special tasks.

Andrey Karpov. 64 bits, Wp64, Visual Studio 2008, Viva64 and all the rest...
Annotation. The purpose of this article is to answer some questions related to safe port of C/C++ code on 64-bit systems. The article is written as an answer to the topic often discussed on forums and related to the use of /Wp64 key and Viva64 tool.

Andrey Karpov, Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Advantages of Viva64
Annotation. The purpose of this commercial article is to show advantages of Viva64 tool throughout the life cycle of software development.

Evgeniy Ryzhkov. Viva64: working up of 64-bit applications.
Annotation. Viva64 - is a tool for searching of errors and possible problems at C/C ++ code at the applications port on the 64-bit platform. Nowadays when the necessity of the 64-bit versions software output is realized by the most of the developers, it is too important to be sure of the working up product quality. Even if the traditional 32-bit version of your product has been tested carefully, its portability on the 64-bit platform may reveal some unexpected problems. Some separate items are devoted to the applications portability problems, and this one tells how to provide the necessary level of the code quality with the help the static analyzer Viva64.

Alexey Kolosov. Using Static Analysis in Program Development
Annotation. Static analysis allows checking program code before the tested program is executed. The static analysis process consists of three steps. First, the analyzed program code is split into tokens, i.e. constants, identifiers, reserved symbols, etc. This operation is performed by lexer. Second, the tokens are passed to parser, which builds an abstract syntax tree (AST) based on the tokens. Finally, the static analysis is performed over the AST. This article describes three static analysis techniques: AST walker analysis, data flow analysis and path-sensitive data flow analysis.