[Bug analyzer/105909] New: RFE: SARIF output could contain metadata about limitations of the analysis

[Bug analyzer/105909] New: RFE: SARIF output could contain metadata about limitations of the analysis

[dmalcolm at gcc dot gnu.org]

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=105909

            Bug ID: 105909
           Summary: RFE: SARIF output could contain metadata about
                    limitations of the analysis
           Product: gcc
           Version: 12.0
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: analyzer
          Assignee: dmalcolm at gcc dot gnu.org
          Reporter: dmalcolm at gcc dot gnu.org
  Target Milestone: ---

The analysis has various limitations:

- It can give up the analysis (currently with the off-by-default
-Wanalyzer-too-complex):
  - too many exploded nodes at a program point
  - too many exploded nodes altogether
- If it encounters a function with unknown behavior, it can approximate the
behavior of the call; the code to do this makes various assumptions
  - the analyzer has hard-coded handlers for various standard functions
  - otherwise, it has a more general "unknown function" handler
- The path-feasibility code can give up if it hits a complexity limit

The SARIF output could contain metadata about these various situations.

Perhaps a warning about "approximating the behavior of unknown function" ?

That way a user of the SARIF data could supply enough stubs/handlers from the
analysis to be "closed world".

[Bug analyzer/105909] RFE: SARIF output could contain metadata about limitations of the analysis

[dmalcolm at gcc dot gnu.org]

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=105909

--- Comment #1 from David Malcolm <dmalcolm at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
Perhaps via 3.58 notification object:
https://docs.oasis-open.org/sarif/sarif/v2.1.0/os/sarif-v2.1.0-os.html#_Toc34317894
which: "describes a condition encountered during the execution of an analysis
tool which is relevant to the operation of the tool itself, as opposed to being
relevant to an artifact being analyzed by the tool."

See "Appendix I. (Informative) Detecting incomplete result sets":
 
https://docs.oasis-open.org/sarif/sarif/v2.1.0/os/sarif-v2.1.0-os.html#_Toc34317946