| Original author(s) | Linus Torvalds |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Josh Triplett, Christopher Li, Luc Van Oostenryck |
| Initial release | 2003 |
| Stable release | 0.6.4
/ September 6, 2021[1] |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Linux, BSD, macOS, MinGW, Cygwin |
| Type | Static code analysis |
| License | MIT License |
| Website | sparse |
Sparse is a computer software tool designed to find possible coding faults in the Linux kernel.[2] Unlike other such tools, this static analysis tool was initially designed to only flag constructs that were likely to be of interest to kernel developers, such as the mixing of pointers to user and kernel address spaces.
Sparse checks for known problems and allows the developer to include annotations in the code that convey information about data types, such as the address space that pointers point to and the locks that a function acquires or releases.
Linus Torvalds started writing Sparse in 2003. Josh Triplett was its maintainer from 2006, a role taken over by Christopher Li in 2009[3] and by Luc Van Oostenryck in November 2018.[4] Sparse is released under the MIT License.
- ^ Luc Van Oostenryck (2021-09-06). "Sparse 0.6.4". [email protected] (Mailing list). Retrieved 2024-05-08.
- ^ Yoann Padioleau; René Rydhof Hansen; Julia L. Lawall; Gilles Muller (2006). Semantic patches for documenting and automating collateral evolutions in Linux device drivers. Proceedings of the 3rd workshop on Programming languages and operating systems: linguistic support for modern operating systems. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.122.7080. doi:10.1145/1215995.1216005. ISBN 1-59593-577-0.
The Linux community has recently begun using various tools to better analyze C code. Sparse is a library that, like a compiler front end, provides convenient access to the abstract syntax tree and typing information of a C program.
- ^ Christopher Li (2009-10-16). "Sparse 0.4.2 released". linux-sparse (Mailing list). Retrieved 2010-11-06.
- ^ change Sparse's maintainer, retrieved December 10, 2018