New software analysis tool improves code quality, reduces time-to-market and shortens development and test cycles for Symbian OS developers
New software analysis tool improves code quality, reduces time-to-market and shortens development and test cycles for Symbian OS developer
Mobile Innovation, the leading user interface (UI) designer, developer and integrator for mobile devices, today announced the launch of CodeScanner, a new suite of software analysis tools for Symbian OS. The launch of CodeScanner further strengthens Mobile Innovation’s portfolio of productivity products for the Symbian development ecosystem.
CodeScanner is a revolutionary static analysis tool which delves deep into code, exploring line by line for defects so that engineers find tough problems more quickly than with traditional debug techniques. Better still, CodeScanner allow engineers to fix defects during development, which is much more cost effective than later in the development lifecycle. Virtually any text based files (including C++ source, MMP files, resources, and other documents) can be analysed.
“It’s a huge benefit to find defects directly at the coding stage rather than involving testers, triage, developer investigation, and so on. With CodeScanner, simple but common code defects can be found automatically and removed, greatly increasing development efficiency,” says Matt Millar, chief technology officer and co-founder, Mobile Innovation. “Also, CodeScanner cleverly finds intermittent defects (i.e. defects that may only occur in low memory conditions), which would be extremely difficult to find via conventional testing methods.”
CodeScanner checks every line of code for defects, glitches, and inconsistencies, and then pinpoints any offending lines of code. Since it finds hard-to-spot problems quickly, CodeScanner saves time and money, improves code quality, reduces time-to-market, and shortens development and test cycles. It is easy to integrate, reliable, accurate and generates useful and intelligent results.
CodeScanner integrates simply into the development process. It plugs directly into Developer Studio and can check individual files or all files within a specified component. CodeScanner is also usable from the command line, and can be used for overnight analysis on all code in a build, automatically outputting HTML that can be linked to a code cross-referencer.
Detecting deviations from coding conventions leads to easier code maintenance and improves the overall quality of the code. Cleaning up defects early allows developers to concentrate code reviews on vital design and architectural issues rather than wasting time on mundane “spot the badly-named variables” sessions.
CodeScanner has been written in a modular way and is therefore easy to extend by development teams to enforce local coding conventions and detect common project specific defects. There is an educational element as well: developers new to Symbian OS (or indeed to C++) programming gain instant feedback on their code, learning common pitfalls and idioms in the process.