[RTEMS Project] #3710: Improve Coverity Scan Integration

[RTEMS trac]

#3710: Improve Coverity Scan Integration
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  Reporter:  Gedare   |      Owner:  Gedare
      Type:  project  |     Status:  assigned
  Priority:  normal   |  Milestone:  Indefinite
 Component:  admin    |    Version:
  Severity:  normal   |   Keywords:  SoC,testing
Blocked By:           |   Blocking:
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 The goal of this project is to create better workflows to incorporate
 static analysis using Coverity Scan into the RTEMS development and release
 cycle.

 Coverity Scan is a static analyzer that can identify various types of
 potential software defects. Coverity offers free use of this analyzer for
 free software projects. Issues identified for RTEMS are at
 https://scan.coverity.com/projects/rtems.

 Coverity Scan identifies POTENTIAL issues. Some may be real bugs. Others
 may indicate that Coverity Scan does not have full awareness of the
 program life. For example, memory allocated during RTEMS initialization
 may appear to be leaked because it is never freed, but this is deliberate
 and the issue marked as such in Coverity Scan.

 You can get an account on [https://scan.coverity.com Coverity Scan] and
 request access to the [https://scan.coverity.com/projects/rtems RTEMS
 Project] to contribute.

 The current process for dealing with Coverity Scan is entirely manual.
 See, for example, [wiki:GCI/Coding/CoverityIssues Google Code-In task
 instructions for Coverity]. This manual process has several drawbacks. The
 purpose of this GSoC Project would be to simplify the process of working
 with Coverity, and to automate it where possible. We have identified two
 starting directions, and encourage interested students to brainstorm on
 other ways to improve the Coverity Scan integration.

 **Reducing False Positives**
 Static analysis suffers from a high number of false positives. Coverity
 Scan provides two methods for removing false
 positives.  First is by creating an optional ''modeling file'' to
 accommodate
 for special cases where the data flow analysis breaks, for example due to
 missing functions that are linked outside the analyzed source code. A
 modeling
 file usually is used to identify functions that terminate execution,
 allocate
 memory, or free memory. Second, source code annotations in specially
 formatted
 comments can also be used to suppress warnings. This project should
 determine which approach to take, and design/implement a path forward.

 **Testing Fixes**
 Since security tools tend to be costly in terms of time or compute
 resources,
 they are normally run on nightly or even weekly builds rather than on
 every
 commit as done for typical continuous integration (CI). It can be tedious
 to merge commits to the development master and trigger a scan to determine
 if the issue has been fixed. Instead, we would like to develop fixes and
 trigger Coverity Scan as needed (subject to staying within the allowed
 scan rates).
 Coverity Scan
 integrates with Github and can be triggered to scan by merging new code to
 a
 specific git repository branch.
 As a first step, a special 'coverity' branch could be created for scanning
 commits that are pushed there, so that developers who are testing changes
 can work through the coverity branch before merging fixes into the master.
 Alternate solutions should be discussed with any mentors.

--
Ticket URL: <http://devel.rtems.org/ticket/3710>
RTEMS Project <http://www.rtems.org/>
RTEMS Project