Integrating an External Code Checker in Eclipse

Codan is a code analysis framework that performs code checks on C/C++ projects. It is part of the Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tooling) suite since 2011. Codan was updated with the Eclipse Juno release in June 2012 to enable developers to automatically execute external code analysis tools within Eclipse. In this article, Alex Ruiz explains why the update is good news for users of Eclipse CDT, then shows you how to use Java code and a little bit of XML to quickly integrate your favorite code checker into your Eclipse C/C++ development environment, using Cppcheck as an example. The article provides a detailed step by step process to achieve this goal that requires just about 100 lines of simple Java code and 30 lines of XML.