Vigilant Software Blog

We've posted a bug-fix release of Sentry today, version 3.1.1. Our customers are encouraged to upgrade to this latest stable release at their convenience. As always, it's available from the download page now.

Happy holidays from Vigilant! Here's to a productive 2012!

A new minor release of Sentry, our flagship static code analyzer, is available now!

What's New in Sentry 3.1.0

• Improved C++11 support: The new C++11 standard has only recently been ratified, but Sentry already supports most of the new language features. Sentry 3.1 adds to this, improving our ability to parse and analyze C++11 programs.

• Faster Capture: Sentry 3.1 speeds up the process of creating a new project by about 25% on all platforms. Additionally, capture times on Windows systems are cut by over 50% thanks to some efficiency improvements.

• New Scanner: The new Shadowed Variable scanner looks for variables whose declarations overshadow a previously reachable variable (whether local, global, or at the class level). This plugin identifies all instances of this potentially confusing practice and helps make your code safer more readable.

• Bug Fixes: While 3.1 includes new features and enhancements, this release also fixes several bugs found in earlier releases. All customers are encouraged to upgrade at their earliest convenience!

See the announcement for Sentry 3.0 to learn about the new features in this major release series.

How To Get Sentry:

Sentry 3.1 is available for Windows and Linux operating systems. Contact us to try Sentry free for 30 days! As always, Vigilant customers can get the latest release in the download area.

A new major release of Sentry, our flagship static code analyzer, is available now!

What's New in Sentry 3.0

• Custom Plugins: You can now write analysis plugins using our Python API, and start finding results specific to your project. This can be as simple as enforcing coding standards, or more advanced, looking for critical defects that can occur in your code.

• New Scanners: Sentry 3.0 ships with several new scanners, finding more defects than ever. Our new scanners can tell you if dangerous type conversions might cause data loss, if class methods are overridden incorrectly, and if misleading or useless conditional expressions appear in your code.

• Better Integration: This release includes further refinements on user experience and compiler integration. Sentry 3.0 is easier to use, while still being more flexible and configurable than previous releases. Build integration is more robust, support for scons (the Python build tool) has been added.

• Under the Hood: Sentry uses an all new project representation under the hood, which is more compact on disk and improves analysis performance. This data can also be used through our Python API, enabling you to interact with your C++ objects in ways that were never possible before.

How To Get Sentry:

Sentry 3.0 is available for Windows and Linux operating systems. Contact us to try Sentry free for 30 days! As always, Vigilant customers can get the latest release in the download area.

A new release of Sentry, our flagship static code analyzer, is available now!

What's New in Sentry 2.3.0

• New Editions: Sentry is now available in Enterprise and Small Business editions, to better meet the needs of our customers. We're excited to help small businesses meet their testing needs with an affordable static analysis solution! Learn more in editions and pricing, or read the press release.

• Language Standards: This release includes the ability to select the language standards to use when analyzing your code. Sentry now supports the K&R, C89, and C99 standards for C. For C++, you can use the current C++98 standard, or some of the new language features available in the draft C++0x standard. (Of course, GNU and Microsoft extensions are still supported, as well.)

• Bug Fixes: As usual, this release contains several bug fixes as well. Support for thread-local storage specifiers has been added. Fixed an issue where the same source file appearing twice in a project.

How To Get Sentry:

Sentry 2.3.0 is available for Windows and Linux operating systems. Contact us to try Sentry free for 30 days! As always, Vigilant customers can get the latest release in the download area.

The latest release of Sentry, our flagship static analyzer, is available today!

What's New in Sentry 2.2.0:

• New Defect Scanners: Two new scanners were introduced to find new kinds of defects. The first, uninitialized_member, identifies class member variables that may not be initialized before they are used. The second, dead_variable, identifies unused variables in the analyzed program.
• Compare Runs: Every time Sentry analyzes a project, a run is saved into the project's history. In 2.2.0, Sentry lets you compare any two runs to see which defects appear in only one or the other. This is a key integration feature that lets you automate the detection of new defects in your continuous integration process. Newly introduced defects can be caught and eliminated immediately.
• Better Linux Integration: The project capture process on Linux has been improved, and now supports basically any kind of build system. Sentry will automatically capture every file, library and program in your project without any modifications to your build process.
• GCC 4.5 Support: This April, GCC 4.5 was made generally available. Sentry's GCC integration has been updated to support this latest release series. As well, support for GCC's PowerPC cross compiler has been added.

Version 2.2.0 also contains a number of bug fixes and performance improvements, making this the fastest, most powerful release of Sentry yet.

How To Get Sentry:

Sentry 2.2.0 is available for Windows and Linux operating systems. Contact us to try Sentry free for 30 days! As always, Vigilant customers can get the latest release in the download area.