Using the Output Window in DevStudio

Introduction

Ever have a tool like lint, gcc, grep, or the like, whose output references many different places? And then you have to painstakingly check out each of those places by hand? And wouldn't it be nice if you could load the output of that tool into DevStudio and then just double-click on the line and jump straight to that location?

My boss ran lint on some code I had written. This version of lint is extremely picky (good) and resulted in 12,115 lines to check out (bad). Much of it was ignorable but it all had to be checked out. But the time and effort of just going to the indicated lines was looking at about 3 days minimum. 3 looong days.

There had to be a better way. So I looked around at the usual places and was surprised to find no help on how to get an arbitrary file into a DevStudio Output window. I'm sure there is a Microsoft article somewhere, but I couldn't find it. There were several articles on writing Add-Ins and Macros, including the requirements for formatting the filename and line number, but nothing more basic.

1. Go to the Tools menu, and select Customize...
2. Select the Tools tab
3. Scroll to the bottom
4. Double-click on the empty rectangle
5. Type name of tool, say "Dump file"
6. Check "Use output window"
7. Check "Prompt for arguments"
8. Set the command to some program that will copy its argument to stdout (I use catfile.bat, shown in all its glory below)
9. Set the initial directory to $(Wkspdir) or whatever directory turns you on the most

The tool to execute, catfile.bat, is complicated in the extreme. Here's the source:

type %1

Using the Tool

Example -- Lint output

OK, here is an example. Here are a few lines from that dreadful lint output:

    memcpy(&tmpOID[1], &almOID[0], oidLength * sizeof(OIDC_T));
SCTE-Alarms.cpp  599  Info 737: Loss of sign in 
       promotion from int to unsigned
    int
SCTE-Alarms.cpp  599  Warning 534: Ignoring return value of function
    'memcpy(void *, const void *, unsigned int)' (compare with line 44, 
    file string.h)
string.h  44  Info 830: Location cited in prior message
-
    int fullLen = tmpOID[0] + 1; // number of components in tmpOID[]
SCTE-Alarms.cpp  601  Info 713: Loss of precision (initialization) (unsigned
    long to int)

filename(linenumber): stuff

my @file = <>;
chomp @file;
my $line;
foreach $line (@file)
{
    if($line =~ m/^(\S+)\s+(\d+)(.+)/)
    {
        print "$1($2):$3\n";
    }
    else
    {
        print $line, "\n";
    }
}

    memcpy(&tmpOID[1], &almOID[0], oidLength * sizeof(OIDC_T));
SCTE-Alarms.cpp(599):  Info 737: Loss of sign in 
    promotion from int to unsigned
    int
SCTE-Alarms.cpp(599):  Warning 534: Ignoring return value of function
    'memcpy(void *, const void *, unsigned int)' 
    (compare with line 44, file
    string.h)
string.h(44):  Info 830: Location cited in prior message
_
    int fullLen = tmpOID[0] + 1; // number of components in tmpOID[]
SCTE-Alarms.cpp(601):  Info 713: Loss of precision 
    (initialization) (unsigned
    long to int)

Now, to use the Dump file tool in DevStudio:

sys_conf.h:709: error: `ULONG' was not declared in this scope
sys_conf.h:709: error: syntax error before `)' token

The filename and linenumber are still not quite right, but this Perl script fixes that:

my @file = <>;
chomp @file;
my $line;
foreach $line (@file)
{
    if($line =~ m/^([^:]+):(\d+):(.+)/)
    {
        print "$1($2):$3\n";
    }
    else
    {
        print $line, "\n";
    }
}

sys_conf.h(709): error: `ULONG' was not declared in this scope
sys_conf.h(709): error: syntax error before `)' token

Points of Interest

• 2/24/2004 -- first release
• 2/25/2004 -- reduced picture sizes to make nice with low-resolution monitors, fixed typo