Eeureka! VCC on Ubuntu (with boogie and z3)

After two weeks of several misadventures with VCC, I was able to patch its source code for building on Linux (or Ubuntu at least). I have also written a little shell script to automate the build and installation on Ubuntu.

For those who have not been able to install VCC on Ubuntu, I have attached a compressed tarball containing the modified VCC source code along with the build and installation bash scripts. download this attachment VCC.tar.gz, go to downloaded folder, and run these commands:

  tar xzf VCC.tar.gz
  sudo ./VCC.sh [ubuntu-release-name]

Substitute [ubuntu-release-name] with your Ubuntu name (for example, in my Ubuntu 14.04 I would run: sudo ./VCC.sh trusty).

I have tested this on my 32_bit OS with the code available on FMSE course page, and after introducing errors (screenshot is attached below).

Disclaimer: by running the script, you implicitly accept microsoft's terms and conditions for visual studio and VCC. please go through licenses at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=2086102 and VCC/LICENSE; run the script only if you agree with both the license agreements.

PS: the script will download around 300 MB data. also note that the vcc command will recognize only windows style paths; so if your C file does not reside in your current directory, you have three alternatives:

1. Change directory to where the C file resides and pass file name directly to vcc command,
2. Enclose the path (absolute or relative) within quotes (single or double consistently), and use the backslash instead of forward slash,
3. Same as (2), except that you do not enclose the path within quotes if you escape each backslash (meta character) with another backslash.

Arnab Chatterjee
MTech (CSE) 2020