Release notes from cppcheck

2.21.1

2026-06-20T16:49:32Z

2.21.1: set version

Cppcheck-2.21.0

2026-06-04T11:36:29Z

Release Notes for Cppcheck 2.21

Major bug fixes & crashes:

Fixed potential crash with incomplete preprocessor directive
Fixed hang in createAst
Fixed invalid AST for braced initialization and references/pointers
Fixed cppcheckError with array typedef
Fixed recheck which now correctly excludes non selected files
Fixed potential crash when rechecking files in gui

New checks:

MISRA C 2012 rule 10.3 now warns on assigning integer literals 0 and 1 to bool in C99 and later while preserving the existing C89 behavior.
funcArgNamesDifferentUnnamed warns on function declarations/definitions where a parameter in either location is unnamed
uninitMemberVarNoCtor warns on user-defined types where (1) some but not all members requiring initialization have in-class initializers or (2) there is a mixture of members which do/do not require initialization.
fcloseInLoopCondition warns when fclose() is used as a while loop condition, which may skip the loop body or double-close the file handle.

C/C++ support:

import project: include path in compile_commands.json now handled correctly

GUI:

Removed handling of Cppcheck Premium LOC license

Other:

Make it possible to specify the regular expression engine using the engine element in a rule XML.
Added CLI option --exitcode-suppress to specify an error ID which should not result in a non-zero exitcode.
Moved source code from https://github.com/danmar/cppcheck to https://github.com/cppcheck-opensource/cppcheck
The official Windows binary is now built with Visual Studio 2026.
Updated simplecpp to 1.7.0.

2.20.1

2026-03-26T14:47:34Z

Fix #14606: Crash in Gui (#8346)

Cppcheck-2.20.0

2026-03-02T17:43:14Z

Release Notes for Cppcheck 2.20

GUI:

Fix: The Misra C checkbox in "Edit Project" dialog is unchecked after reloading project.
Fix: In the Misra Report, use proper icons according to misra classifications
Fix: The platform files are not shown in the dropdown in ProjectFileDialog
Troubleshooting: detailed progress view that shows what files the threads are working on

Changed interface:

removed CMake option "DISABLE_CRTDBG_MAP_ALLOC"
CMake option "BUILD_TESTS" has been deprecated and will be removed in Cppcheck 2.22 - use "BUILD_TESTING" instead

Other:

The built-in "win*" and "unix*" platforms will now default to signed char type instead of unknown signedness. If you require unsigned chars please specify "--funsigned-char"
bumped minimum required CMake version to 3.22
Support inline polyspace suppressions

2.19.1

2026-01-02T16:53:19Z

2.19.1: set version (#8080)

2.19.0

2025-12-21T18:08:44Z

Release Notes for Cppcheck 2.19

Major bug fixes & crashes:

Crash in CheckClass::checkConst()
fuzzing crash (assert) in Token::update_property_info()
Crash in checkConstVariable()
Crash in valueFlowLifetimeClassConstructor()
GUI: scratch pad crash
Assert failure in getParentValueTypes()
Crash in simplecpp::Macro::expand()
crash in Tokenizer::simplifyCPPAttribute()

New checks:

Detect zero initialization of unions in which its largest member is not
declared as the first one. Depending on the compiler, there's no guarantee
that the complete union will be zero initialized in such scenarios leading to
potential access of uninitialized memory.
Added warning when main() throws an exception

C/C++ support:

Fixed syntax error for C++23 lambda without parameter clause
Added support for typeof and __typeof operators

GUI:

Fix bug: checks multiple configurations even though user provides defines

Changed interface:

some preprocessorErrorDirective and syntaxError errors got more specific error IDs.
Removed deprecated platforms unix32-unsigned and unix64-unsigned
Improve progress value
Added float bits support in platform configuration
Fixed --showtime not accounting for addons

Performance:

Introduced cache for followAllReferences() calls

Infrastructure & dependencies:

Removed deprecated support for builds with Qt5.
Added make variables CXXOPTS and LDOPTS to extend existing CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS.
Added make variables CPPOPTS to extend existing CPPFLAGS.
CPPFLAGS are not longer being passed to the linker command for cppcheck and testrunner.
Updated Qt to 6.10.0 (official Windows release only).
The official Windows binary is now built against Boost 1.89 for increased performance.
Updated to simplecpp 1.6.2
The Visual Studio builds not longer set the WIN32 define.
Added DISALLOW_PROCESS_EXECUTOR for building without fork().

The changes focus heavily on stability (crash fixes), C/C++ compatibility, reducing false positives, and improving performance.

2.18.3

2025-09-02T19:12:05Z

2.18.3: Set version

2.18.2

2025-08-29T20:10:20Z

2.18.2: Set version

2.18.1

2025-08-16T06:34:54Z

2.18.1: Set version

Cppcheck-2.18.0

2025-07-20T12:25:55Z

Release Notes for Cppcheck 2.18

Changed interface:

Updated path matching syntax for -i, --file-filter, suppressions, GUI excludes, and project file excludes.
Old patterns that use a * may need to use ** instead if it is intended to match path separators. More details can be seen in the manual.

Deprecations:

Support for building with Qt 5 will be removed in Cppcheck 2.19.
The platform 'unix32-unsigned' has been deprecated and will be removed in Cppcheck 2.19. Please use '--platform=unix32 --funsigned-char' instead.
The platform 'unix64-unsigned' has been deprecated and will be removed in Cppcheck 2.19. Please use '--platform=unix64 --funsigned-char' instead.

Other:

Updated Qt to 6.9.1 (official Windows release only).
added CMake target run-clang-tidy-csa to run Clang Static Analyzer
added CMake option ENABLE_CSA_ALPHA to enable the Clang Static Analyzer alpha checkers
Updated TinyXML-2 to v11.0.0
The minimum supported Python version has been bumped to 3.7.
CMake will now unconditionally use Boost.Containers if available. If CMake option USE_BOOST is specified it will now bail out when it is not found.
Fix checking a project that contains several project file entries for the same file.
Fixed --file-filter matching of looked up files in provided paths.
Split up cstyleCast checker; dangerous casts produce portability/warning reports, safe casts produce style reports.
Removed deprecated '--showtime=' value 'top5'. Please use 'top5_file' or 'top5_summary' instead.