Multi-format archive and compression library
This report summarizes scanner evidence for libarchive/libarchive, a C project with 3,651 GitHub stars. SynthScan examined 266,281 lines of code across 842 source files, recording 382 pattern matches distributed across 1 syntactic category. The legacy adjusted pattern signal is 1.4 (Low pattern signal); it is not an authorship estimate.
Use the findings to ask whether maintainers can explain intent, verify dependencies, simplify unnecessary scaffolding, and focus review effort. Risk Payload v1 adds ownership, supply-chain, over-engineering, and review-effort vectors when available. These are prompts for human verification, not probabilities, security findings, or measured maintenance costs.
Use each vector to guide manual verification of the underlying findings.
Payload schema: 1.0.0 · Engine: 2.0.0 · Scoring: heuristic-density-v1 · Scan date: 2026-10-31.
Can maintainers explain intent, assumptions, and trade-offs? 382 finding(s).
Are imports declared and package/API names verified? 0 finding(s).
Are wrappers, guards, and repeated structures necessary? 0 finding(s).
Which changes need focused human review? 382 finding(s).
This chart tracks the legacy adjusted pattern score across scan runs. Changes can reflect source changes, scan coverage, or detector/scoring versions; they do not measure AI adoption or prove that a team refactored code. Compare runs only when their scoring versions are compatible. The dashed line tracks the raw pattern-hit count.
Groups findings by configured severity weight. Severity is not a confidence estimate, security rating, or proof that a package is missing. Verify imports against the project's manifests and inspect each finding in its local design context.
This horizontal bar chart shows where configured pattern scores accumulate across directories. Treat the bars as locations to inspect, not as evidence of authorship or code quality. Use the file-level findings to decide whether a directory needs a focused ownership, dependency, complexity, or review check.
The scanner identified 382 distinct pattern matches across 1 syntactic category. Each entry below represents a discrete location in the source code where the engine recorded a detector match to inspect in context. Expand any category row to inspect the individual file paths, line numbers, code snippets, and the lexical context (CODE, COMMENT, or STRING) in which each match was detected.
Reading the findings table: The Severity column indicates the configured finding weight (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW). The Context column identifies whether the match occurred inside executable code, an inline comment, or a string literal — legacy comment-context matches receive a ×1.5 score weight. The ⚡ bolt icon marks clustered matches: three or more patterns within a 10-line window, each receiving an additional ×1.5 density multiplier under the legacy scoring model.
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | CMakeLists.txt | 1 | # | COMMENT |
| LOW | CMakeLists.txt | 81 | # libtool accepts a string "current:revision:age"; in libarchive, that's set to | COMMENT |
| LOW | CMakeLists.txt | 181 | # Set compile flags for debug build. | COMMENT |
| LOW | CMakeLists.txt | 461 | # Maybe DLL path is "C:/Program Files/GnuWin32/bin". | COMMENT |
| LOW | CMakeLists.txt | 1481 | # During checking functions, we should use -fno-builtin to avoid the | COMMENT |
| LOW | cat/bsdcat.c | 1 | /*- | COMMENT |
| LOW | cat/bsdcat_platform.h | 21 | /* Not having a config.h of some sort is a serious problem. */ | COMMENT |
| LOW | cat/bsdcat_platform.h | 41 | #elif defined(_MSC_VER) | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_common.h | 41 | #include "config_freebsd.h" | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_common.h | 61 | #define dirent direct | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_common.h | 81 | #include <acl/libacl.h> | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_common.h | 101 | /* Windows (including Visual Studio and MinGW but not Cygwin) */ | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_common.h | 121 | (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 7)) | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_main.c | 21 | * THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_main.c | 41 | */ | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_main.c | 61 | #ifdef HAVE_ACL_LIBACL_H | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_main.c | 81 | #ifdef HAVE_SYS_RICHACL_H | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_main.c | 121 | * to only the most generic programming techniques in the test harness | COMMENT |
| LOW | test_utils/test_main.c | 141 | #endif | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/la_queue.h | 121 | #define QMD_TRACE_HEAD(head) | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip_platform.h | 21 | /* Not having a config.h of some sort is a serious problem. */ | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip_platform.h | 41 | #undef __LA_NORETURN | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip.c | 21 | #endif | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip.c | 41 | #ifdef HAVE_STDLIB_H | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip_windows.c | 21 | #include <winnt.h> | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip_windows.c | 41 | #define S_IRWXU _S_IRWXU | COMMENT |
| LOW | unzip/bsdunzip_windows.h | 21 | #include <direct.h> | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_rar.c | 21 | * DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_rar.c | 41 | #include "archive_entry.h" | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_rar.c | 61 | #define ENDARC_HEAD 0x7b | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_rar.c | 81 | #define FHD_SPLIT_AFTER 0x0002 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_rar.c | 101 | #define DICTIONARY_SIZE_4096 0xC0 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_rar.c | 121 | #define COMPRESS_METHOD_BEST 0x35 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_filter_zstd.c | 21 | * THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_write_set_format_7zip.c | 21 | * THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_write_set_format_7zip.c | 41 | #include <bzlib.h> | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_write_set_format_7zip.c | 61 | #include "archive_string.h" | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_write_set_format_7zip.c | 81 | #define kEnd 0x00 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_write_set_format_7zip.c | 101 | #define kMTime 0x14 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 21 | * THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 41 | /* FreeBSD 8.0 and later has NFSv4 ACL support */ | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 61 | #define HAVE_SHA512 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 81 | #define HAVE_CHOWN 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 101 | #define HAVE_EFTYPE 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 121 | #define HAVE_FUTIMESAT 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 141 | #define HAVE_LINK 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 161 | #define HAVE_POSIX_SPAWNP 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 181 | #define HAVE_STRCHR 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 201 | #define HAVE_SYS_MOUNT_H 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 221 | #define HAVE_UNSIGNED_LONG_LONG_INT 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 241 | #if __FreeBSD_version >= 800505 | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/config_freebsd.h | 261 | #ifdef WITH_OPENSSL | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_write_disk_set_standard_lookup.c | 21 | * THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_ar.c | 21 | * NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_format_ar.c | 61 | char *strtab; | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_filter_lrzip.c | 21 | * THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_read_support_filter_compress.c | 61 | * OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_util.c | 21 | * DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive_util.c | 41 | #ifdef HAVE_STRING_H | COMMENT |
| LOW | libarchive/archive.h | 61 | #if !defined(__LA_INT64_T_DEFINED) | COMMENT |
| 322 more matches not shown… | ||||