Josh Triplett announced the release of Sparse v0.04. Originally written by Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Sparse has been maintained by Josh since 2006. Highlights of the new release include a new automated test suite invoked via 'make check', a new utility named 'c2xml' for generating an XML representation of C files, man pages for 'sparse' and 'cgcc', improved graphing, and numerous bug fixes. The project's web page explains:

"Sparse, the semantic parser, provides a compiler frontend capable of parsing most of ANSI C as well as many GCC extensions, and a collection of sample compiler backends, including a static analyzer also called 'sparse'. Sparse provides a set of annotations designed to convey semantic information about types, such as what address space pointers point to, or what locks a function acquires or releases."