CppCheck + CMake - skip thirdparty sources

Question

I am working on a large codebase consisting of Modern C++, Legacy C++ (30+ years old MFC) and a number of third-party libraries (Boost, RangeV3, Catch2 etc.).

The code is built using CMake and targeted to Windows and Linux (x86 & ARM). For the modern code I am using CppCheck for static analysis. Unfortunately when I build with CppCheck enabled a lot of time is spent running CppCheck over the third-party source (*.cpp) files.

The thirdparty sources are included via the CMake FethContent syntax, e.g.

Include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
  Catch2
  GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/catchorg/Catch2.git
  GIT_TAG        v3.0.1
  SYSTEM
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(Catch2)

CppCheck is enabled via:

set(CMAKE_CXX_CPPCHECK
                       --suppress=missingInclude
                       --suppress=missingIncludeSystem
                       --suppress=unusedFunction
                       --suppress=unmatchedSuppression
                       --suppress=functionStatic
                       --suppress=funcArgNamesDifferent
                       --suppress=*:*_deps/*
                       --enable=all
                       --inline-suppr
                       --inconclusive
                       --force
                       -i ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/imgui/lib
                       )

The _deps directory is the location where thirdparty sources are fetched and built and the line --suppress=*:*_deps/* disables CppCheck for the headers but does not prevent it from running when each thirdparty library is built.

How can I prevent CppCheck from being run over the thirdparty libraries?

Is there something I can add to the CMake section which pulls in the library to disable it? Such as clearing CMAKE_CXX_CPPCHECK before the call to FetchContent_Declare and setting it again after the call FetchContent_MakeAvailable

Answer 1

Such as clearing CMAKE_CXX_CPPCHECK before the call to FetchContent_Declare and setting it again after the call FetchContent_MakeAvailable

That's the best way to do it to prevent cmake from running Cppcheck on sources you don't want it to.

Try this:

set(old_cmake_cxx_cppcheck "${CMAKE_CXX_CPPCHECK}")
set(CMAKE_CXX_CPPCHECK "")
// FetchContent stuff here...
set(CMAKE_CXX_CPPCHECK "${old_cmake_cxx_cppcheck")