objcheck

objcheck, aka Objective-C Check, tests Objective-C and Objective-C++ code against both Clang and GCC automatically.

Warning

objcheck checks target source by compiling and executing it. Hence, DON'T use objcheck to test untrusted source.

Why objcheck?

Currently, the major Objective-C compilers, Clang and GCC, are not totally compatible at code level. If wanting to check compiler compatibility for our Objective-C code base, we have to compile it twice.

It is tedious to write Makefile or another project configuration file for each code base. To address this issue, objcheck automatically tests your code base against both Clang and GCC without any project configuration file.

objcheck intends to check small code base because objcheck doesn't rely on any external project configuration, unsuitable for large and complex projects.

System Requirements

objcheck itself is implemented in POSIX shell. Besides a shell, you need

• GCC with Objective-C support
• Clang
• GNUstep

objcheck will check these dependencies, emitting an error message if one is not installed on your system.

We tested objcheck on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Amazon Linux. The latter is largely RHEL and CentOS compatible. It should work on other Unix-like OSes as well.

Supported File Formats

objcheck supports the following file extensions:

• .m for Objective-C source
• .mm for Objective-C++ source
• .c for C source
• .cpp, .cxx or .cc for C++ source

objcheck can handle Objective-C projects that mix these languages together.

Usage

Before using objcheck, add executable mode to it:

$ chmod +x path/to/objcheck

Then, copy objcheck to a valid $PATH like $HOME/bin to use it.

Check single file:

$ objcheck path/to/file.m

Check multiple files in a project:

$ objcheck path/to/*.m

Check for a static library:

$ objcheck static path/to/*.m

Check for a dynamic library:

$ objcheck dynamic path/to/*.m

Show help info:

$ objcheck help

Environment Variables

You can adjust the behavior of objcheck with the following environment variables:

• GCC to set GCC compiler
• GXX to set G++ compiler
• CLANG to set Clang compiler
• CLANGXX to set Clang++ compiler
• OUT_FILE to set the name of a temporary output file
• GNUSTEP_INCLUDE to set the include path of GNUstep
• GNUSTEP_LIB to set the lib path of GNUstep
• CFLAGS to set custom include paths and compiler flags for C
• CXXFLAGS to set custom include paths and compiler flags for C++
• LDFLAGS to set custom lib paths
• LIBS to set custom library linkages
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH to set custom binary file paths

All environment variables are optional, set with sensible default values.

License

Copyright 2019 (c) Michelle Chen. Licensed under MIT