Automated checking of programming assignments using static analysis

Sammanfattning: Computer science and software engineering education usually contain programming courses that require writing code that is graded. These assignments are corrected through manual code review by teachers or course assistants. The large amount of assignments motivates us to find ways to automatically correct certain parts of the assignments. One method to ensure certain requirements of written code is fulfilled is by using static analysis, which analyzes code without executing it. We utilize Clang-tidy and Clang Static Analyzer, existing static analysis tools for C/C++, and extend their capabilities to automate requirement checking based on existing assignments,such as prohibiting certain language constructs and ensuring certain function signatures match the ones provided in instructions. We evaluate our forked version of the Clang tooling on actual student hand-ins to show that the tool is capable of automating some aspects that would otherwise require manual code review. We were able to find several errors, even in assignments that were considered complete. However, Clang Static Analyzer also failed to find a memory leak, which leads us to conclude that despite the benefits,static analysis is best used as a complement to assist in finding errors.