The checker classes (i.e. classes derived from `CheckerBase` via the
utility template `Checker<...>`) act as intermediates between the user
and the analyzer engine, so they have two interfaces:
- On the frontend side, they have a public name, can be enabled or
disabled, can accept checker options and can be reported as the source
of bug reports.
- On the backend side, they can handle various checker callbacks and
they "leave a mark" on the `ExplodedNode`s that are created by them.
(These `ProgramPointTag` marks are internal: they appear in debug logs
and can be queried by checker logic; but the user doesn't see them.)
In a significant majority of the checkers there is 1:1 correspondence
between these sides, but there are also many checker classes where
several related user-facing checkers share the same backend class.
Historically each of these "multi-part checker" classes had its own
hacks to juggle its multiple names, which led to lots of ugliness like
lazy initialization of `mutable std::unique_ptr<BugType>` members and
redundant data members (when a checker used its custom `CheckNames`
array and ignored the inherited single `Name`).
My recent commit 27099982da2f5a6c2d282d6b385e79d080669546 tried to unify
and standardize these existing solutions to get rid of some of the
technical debt, but it still used enum values to identify the checker
parts within a "multi-part" checker class, which led to some ugliness.
This commit introduces a new framework which takes a more direct,
object-oriented approach: instead of identifying checker parts with
`{parent checker object, index of part}` pairs, the parts of a
multi-part checker become stand-alone objects that store their own name
(and enabled/disabled status) as a data member.
This is implemented by separating the functionality of `CheckerBase`
into two new classes: `CheckerFrontend` and `CheckerBackend`. The name
`CheckerBase` is kept (as a class derived from both `CheckerFrontend`
and `CheckerBackend`), so "simple" checkers that use `CheckerBase` and
`Checker<...>` continues to work without changes. However we also get
first-class support for the "many frontends - one backend" situation:
- The class `CheckerFamily<...>` works exactly like `Checker<...>` but
inherits from `CheckerBackend` instead of `CheckerBase`, so it won't
have a superfluous single `Name` member.
- Classes deriving from `CheckerFamily` can freely own multiple
`CheckerFrontend` data members, which are enabled within the
registration methods corresponding to their name and can be used to
initialize the `BugType`s that they can emit.
In this scheme each `CheckerFamily` needs to override the pure virtual
method `ProgramPointTag::getTagDescription()` which returns a string
which represents that class for debugging purposes. (Previously this
used the name of one arbitrary sub-checker, which was passable for
debugging purposes, but not too elegant.)
I'm planning to implement follow-up commits that convert all the
"multi-part" checkers to this `CheckerFamily` framework.