-----Original Message----- From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Maciej Sobczak Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:31 AM To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [boost] Vera++ <snip>
and any transforms that could be used to fix the rule afterwards.
It's not that simple. The rules are just scripts and the set of scripts can be different on each installation. Same for transforms. In general, rules have no idea about transforms and their meaning, so they cannot recommend anything. On the other hand, some recommendations can be included in the documentation of each rule - at least those which are provided together with the tool.
To be frank, I'm not a big fan of automatic correction of code. This concept assumes that the *intended* form can be automatically deduced. At the same time I assume that any violation is actually a question mark about the original intentions and that it can be reliably resolved only by human (I don't trust the code which was "fixed" without me being involved).
These two assumptions are (philosophically) incompatible. <snip> -- Maciej Sobczak * www.msobczak.com * www.inspirel.com
I was not trying to suggest automatically correcting the problems; I was only suggesting that when the rules are crafted it would be useful if the names of any relevant transforms were listed after the message so I would know what to do. For example you could have a --verbose option that gives hints, so instead of just aligned_storage.hpp:160: trailing whitespace you could say: aligned_storage.hpp:160: [L001] trailing whitespace -fix1: vera++ -transform trim_right aligned_storage.hpp -fix2: vera++ -transform som_other_transform aligned_storage.hpp Actually the reason I suggested that was because I got the message about tabs and could not find a transform to fix it, even though I expected there to be one. I assume that you just haven't gotten around to that one yet :) Also I have used eclipse in the past for Java programming and that IDE does an incredible job at suggesting corrections and applying them. The IDE puts an icon next to a line if there is a syntax error or if there is a code analysis rule (like a vera++ rule) that is broken at the line. When you right click on the icon you can choose from a list of possible actions to fix the problem. I do not know of a c++ editor or IDE with this feature but I think that if Vera++ can provide a consistent syntax for listing suggestions then authors of editors could write plug-ins for it (or maybe I am just dreaming). Actually the Java tool lets you put special comments in to instruct the analyzer to ignore messages on the next statement. For your program it could be something like: //@ignore_rule L001 That makes sure the analyzer doesn't flag it as a warning and it lets any other reader know that you deliberately chose to break convention for some reason. I'm just putting that out there. :-) -- John