Troubleshoot Polyspace Analysis from MATLAB

When you run a Polyspace^® analysis on your C/C++ code, if one or more of your files fail to compile, the analysis continues with the remaining files. You can choose to stop the analysis on compilation errors.

proj = polyspace.Project;
proj.Configuration.EnvironmentSettings.StopWithCompileError = true;

However, it is more convenient to let the analysis complete and capture all compilation errors.

The compilation errors are displayed in the analysis log that appears on the MATLAB^® command window. The analysis log also contains the options used and the various stages of analysis. The lines that indicate errors begin with the Error: string. Find these lines and extract them to a log file for easier scanning. Produce a warning to indicate that compilation errors occurred.

Prerequisites

Before you run Polyspace from MATLAB, you must link your Polyspace and MATLAB installations. See Integrate Polyspace with MATLAB and Simulink.

Capture Polyspace Analysis Errors in Error Log

The function runPolyspace defined later captures the output from the command window using the evalc function and stores lines starting with Error: in a file error.log. You can call runPolyspace with paths to your source and include folders.

For instance, you can call the function with paths to demo source files in the subfolder polyspace/examples/cxx/Bug_Finder_Example/sources of the MATLAB installation folder.

sourcePath = fullfile(polyspaceroot, 'polyspace', ... 
    'examples', 'cxx', 'Bug_Finder_Example', 'sources');
includePath = fullfile(polyspaceroot, 'polyspace', ... 
    'examples', 'cxx', 'Bug_Finder_Example', 'sources');
[status, resultsSummary] = runPolyspace(sourcePath, includePath);

The function is defined as follows.

function [status, resultsSummary] = runPolyspace(sourcePath, libPath)
% runPolyspace takes two string arguments: source and include folder.
% The files in the source folder are analyzed for defects.
% If one or more files fail to compile, the errors are saved in a log.
% A warning on the screen indicates that compilation errors occurred.

    proj = polyspace.Project;

    % Specify sources
    proj.Configuration.Sources = {fullfile(sourcePath,'*')};
    
    % Specify compiler and paths to libraries
    proj.Configuration.TargetCompiler.Compiler = 'gnu4.9';
    proj.Configuration.EnvironmentSettings.IncludeFolders = {fullfile(libPath,'*')};
        
    
    % Run analysis
    runMode = 'bugFinder';
    [logFileContent,status] = evalc('run(proj, runMode)');
    
    % Open file for writing errors
    errorFile = fopen('error.log','wt+');
    
    % Check log file for compilation errors
    numErrors = 0;
    
    log = strsplit(logFileContent,'\n');
    errorLines = find(contains(log, {'Error:'}, 'IgnoreCase', true));
    for ii=1:numel(errorLines)
          fprintf(errorFile, '%s\n', log{errorLines(ii)});
          numErrors = numErrors + 1;
    end
    
    if numErrors
        warning('%d compilation error(s). See error.log for details.', numErrors);  
    end
             
    fclose(errorFile);
    
    % Read results
    resObj = proj.Results;
    resultsSummary = getSummary(resObj, 'defects');
end

The analysis log is also captured in a file Polyspace_R20##n_ProjectName_date-time.log. Instead of capturing the output from the command window, you can search this file.

You can adapt this script for other purposes. For instance, you can capture warnings in addition to errors. The lines with warnings begin with Warning:. The warnings indicate situations where the analysis proceeds despite an issue. The analysis makes an assumption to work around the issue. If the assumption is incorrect, you can see errors later or in rare cases, incorrect analysis results.