CLANG-CHECK(1)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, gather round 🫶 because this is the manual page for clang-check — and yeah, the page literally calls itself "manual page for clang-check 20", that's the whole name, no notes 💅

also it's a User Commands page, which means it's section 1 of the manual. so when you see CLANG-CHECK(1) floating around out there in the wild, that's just this page's government name ✨

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so here's the whole vibe of how you call this thing:

USAGE: clang-check [options] <source0> [... <sourceN>]

options in, source files in, let's go ✨ (and that's source0 all the way through sourceN, forever and ever, no cap).

and then, because the DESCRIPTION section is where the options live, here they all are 👇👇

🧸 OPTIONS

🎀 Generic Options

• --help — displays the available options 🫶 (and psst, --help-hidden gets you more)
• --help-list — displays the list of available options (again, --help-list-hidden if you want more 👀)
• --version — displays the version of this program, so you always know which era of clang-check you're in ⭐

👑 clang-check options

• --analyze — run the static analysis engine 🔥
• --analyzer-output-path=<string> — write output to <file>
• --ast-dump — build the ASTs and then debug dump them
• --ast-dump-filter=<string> — use this with -ast-dump or -ast-print to dump/print only the AST declaration nodes that have a certain substring in a qualified name. and if you wanna see every filterable declaration node name? use -ast-list 🎯
• --ast-list — build the ASTs and print the list of declaration node qualified names
• --ast-print — build the ASTs and then pretty-print them 💅 pretty print?? we love a glow-up
• --extra-arg=<string> — an additional argument to append to the compiler command line
• --extra-arg-before=<string> — an additional argument to prepend to the compiler command line (note the difference bestie, one goes on the end, one goes on the front 🧚)
• --fix-what-you-can — apply fix-it advice even in the presence of unfixable errors 😭 it's giving "we do what we can"
• --fixit — apply fix-it advice to the input source ✨
• -p <string> — build path 🗂️
• --syntax-tree-dump — dump the syntax tree
• --tokens-dump — dump the preprocessed tokens

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so about that build path, because this part is lowkey important:

-p <build-path> is what you use to read a compile command database 🗂️

for example, it can be a CMake build directory in which a file named compile_commands.json exists (use the -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON CMake option to get this output, iykyk). and when no build path is specified? it goes hunting — a search for compile_commands.json will be attempted through all parent paths of the first input file 👀

want an example of setting up Clang Tooling on a source tree? here:

https://clang.llvm.org/docs/HowToSetupToolingForLLVM.html

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and now, <source0> ... — these specify the paths of source files 🫶 these paths are looked up in the compile command database, and there are rules, so pay attention:

• if the path of a file is absolute, it needs to point into CMake's source tree 🎯
• if the path is relative, the current working directory needs to be in the CMake source tree, and the file must be in a subdirectory of the current working directory 📁
• "./" prefixes in the relative files will be automatically removed ✨ but the rest of a relative path must be a suffix of a path in the compile command database. periodt 💅

for example, to run clang-check on all files in a subtree of the source tree, use:

find path/in/subtree -name '*.cpp'|xargs clang-check

or, using a specific build path:

find path/in/subtree -name '*.cpp'|xargs clang-check -p build/path

note: path/in/subtree and the current directory should follow the rules described above 👆 don't skip that part bestie, it will bite you 🌸

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okay that's the whole page!! this was clang-check 20, from September 2026, and the footer over there is still yelling CLANG-CHECK(1) at us 💖 go forth and dump some syntax trees, you absolute icon 👑🦋