Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Understand VS Clang Static Analyzer

Compare Understand VS Clang Static Analyzer and see what are their differences

Understand logo Understand

Combines a powerful Code Editor together with an impressive array of static analysis tools that will change the way you work with code.

Clang Static Analyzer logo Clang Static Analyzer

The Clang Static Analyzer is a source code analysis tool that finds bugs in C, C++, and Objective-C...
  • Understand Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • Clang Static Analyzer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-28

Understand features and specs

  • Static Code Analysis
  • Metrics
  • Graphs
  • Code Navigation
  • Dependency Analysis
  • Architectures
  • Compliance Validation
  • API Support
  • Code Editing

Clang Static Analyzer features and specs

  • Integration with Clang
    The Clang Static Analyzer is built as part of the Clang project, ensuring seamless integration with the Clang compiler. This allows for easy adoption in projects that already use Clang for compiling, as there is no need for additional tooling setup.
  • Open Source
    Being an open-source tool, Clang Static Analyzer is freely available for anyone to use and modify. This encourages a community-driven approach to improvements and provides the flexibility to tailor the tool to specific needs.
  • Path-sensitive Analysis
    Clang Static Analyzer performs path-sensitive analysis, which means it evaluates different execution paths in the code to detect complex bugs that may only manifest under certain conditions.
  • Deep C/C++ Support
    As part of the LLVM project, Clang Static Analyzer offers robust support for C and C++ languages, leveraging the deep language understanding from the Clang front-end.

Possible disadvantages of Clang Static Analyzer

  • Limited Language Support
    While it is excellent for C and C++, Clang Static Analyzer has limited support for other programming languages, which can be a drawback for projects involving multiple languages.
  • False Positives
    Like many static analysis tools, Clang Static Analyzer can generate false positives, where it reports issues that are not actual bugs. This can require developers to spend additional time reviewing and dismissing spurious warnings.
  • Complex Setup for Non-Clang Projects
    Projects that are not already using Clang might face a more complex setup process to integrate Clang Static Analyzer, as it requires adapting build configurations to use Clang.
  • Performance Overhead
    Running Clang Static Analyzer can introduce significant performance overhead during the analysis phase, which might lead to longer build or integration times, especially for large codebases.

Understand videos

Getting Started with Understand

More videos:

  • Demo - What is Understand

Clang Static Analyzer videos

2019 LLVM Developers’ Meeting: A. Dergachev “Developing the Clang Static Analyzer”

More videos:

  • Review - Clang Static Analyzer - Eduard Bachmakov, Linux Foundation (GSoC)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Understand and Clang Static Analyzer)
Code Coverage
52 52%
48% 48
Code Analysis
44 44%
56% 56
Code Quality
100 100%
0% 0
Code Review
33 33%
67% 67

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Understand and Clang Static Analyzer.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Understand's answer

-C/C++ -Qt -Understand

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

Understand's answer

-NASA -U.S. Airforce -General Electric -Nvidia -Raytheon -Amazon -Lockheed Martin -Samsung -Raytheon -Pratt & Whitney -Dell -Intuity -Aurora Flight Sciences

What makes your product unique?

Understand's answer

Understand has shares many features found in other products but all wrapped into one easy to use package. Our most defining feature is the Hyper-XREF™ technology we invented that provides a detailed cross-referencing of all the interconnections in your code.

User comments

Share your experience with using Understand and Clang Static Analyzer. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Understand and Clang Static Analyzer

Understand Reviews

TOP 40 Static Code Analysis Tools (Best Source Code Analysis Tools)
Just like its name, this tool lets user UNDERSTAND code by analyzing, measuring, visualizing and maintaining. This allows quick analysis of massive codes. This is one tool that is mainly used by the aerospace and automakers industry. Supports major languages like C/C++, ADA, COBOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL, Python and other web languages.

Clang Static Analyzer Reviews

We have no reviews of Clang Static Analyzer yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Clang Static Analyzer should be more popular than Understand. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Understand mentions (1)

  • Discontinue Sourcetrail
    Https://lattix.com/ can produce impact reports showing “changing X affects A, B and Y on the first level which in turn affects C, D, E, F and Z on the second level” and so on… https://scitools.com/ Understand can answer similar questions and tries to perform flow analysis “through” function pointers as well. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago

Clang Static Analyzer mentions (7)

  • Improvements to static analysis in GCC 14
    Clang has a similar tool, the Clang Static Analyzer: https://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Memory Safe or Bust?
    Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment [CI/CD] pipelines play a crucial role in enforcing code quality, especially when working with memory-unsafe languages. By integrating automated dynamic analysis tools like Valgrind or AddressSanitizer, static analysis tools like Clang Static Analyzer or cppcheck, and manual code review processes, developers can identify and mitigate many memory-related... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Static Code analysis
    No one static analyzer catches everything. It's best to run multiple. Popular ones are cppcheck, clang-analyzer, GCC static analyzer in GCC 10+, flawfinder, lizard. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Checked C
    With "cross translation units" (CTU) analysis a static analyzer could derive a constraint on `some_function` return value and check this against the array size to detect a possible bug. The Clang static analyzer [1], used through CodeChecker (CC) [2], do support CTU (enabled with `--ctu`). I'm very happy with the result on the code I'm working on. Of course this is not magic, and it's important to understand the... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • What's in your tool belt?
    Cppcheck and Clang Analyzer: statically analyze your code to find bad style and bugs (undefined behavior) respectively. Clang Analyzer can actually be frighteningly clever and has a low false positive rate (unlike most other non-commercial static checkers). Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Understand and Clang Static Analyzer, you can also consider the following products

SonarQube - SonarQube, a core component of the Sonar solution, is an open source, self-managed tool that systematically helps developers and organizations deliver Clean Code.

Cppcheck - Cppcheck is an analysis tool for C/C++ code. It detects the types of bugs that the compilers normally fail to detect. The goal is no false positives. CppCheckDownload cppcheck for free.

Source Insight - Source Insight is a programming editor & code browser with built-in live analysis for C/C++, C#, Java, and more; helping you understand large projects.

Codacy - Automatically reviews code style, security, duplication, complexity, and coverage on every change while tracking code quality throughout your sprints.

Parasoft C/C++test - Ensure compliance with a variety of functional safety, security, and coding standards in embedded C/C++ software.

JArchitect - JArchitect is used by developers to measure, understand and improve their Java code quality.