• codeql-lab: Centralized Git Repository for CodeQL Development
  • Overview
  • Purpose
  • Repository Location
  • Intended Use Cases
• Prerequisites
• Repository Layout
  • Core Structure
  • Additional Structure Notes

codeql-lab: Centralized Git Repository for CodeQL Development

Overview

codeql-lab is a consolidated Git repository that collects all relevant CodeQL components, resources, and tooling into a single version-controlled location.

Purpose

The goal of this repository is to provide an integrated development environment (“lab”) for CodeQL research, experimentation, and custom query development. It simplifies setup by maintaining all required submodules, configuration files, and datasets in one place.

Repository Location

The primary repository is hosted at: https://github.com/hohn/codeql-lab

Intended Use Cases

• Local experimentation with CodeQL queries and libraries.
• End-to-end testing of custom model data and query logic. This includes writing and validating custom data flow models, adjusting model coverage, and confirming that query results behave as expected across controlled datasets. The lab setup supports rapid iteration on QL logic, helping detect unintended changes and enabling reproducible evaluations of taint tracking, control flow, or API usage patterns.
• Structured collaboration and controlled updates across all CodeQL-related artifacts.
• Simplified onboarding and reproducible setup for new contributors or analysis environments.

Prerequisites

Working with this repository assumes prior experience with:

• Git, Bash, and standard Unix command-line tools. These are used throughout and are required for setup and day-to-day tasks. Tools such as ripgrep, GNU Bash, and grep/regex workflows are assumed.
• At least one supported programming language, such as C, C++, Java, Python, Go, or Ruby. A solid understanding of the target language is necessary to interpret analysis results and write effective queries. See general background on programming languages if needed.
• Basic familiarity with program structure concepts, including abstract syntax trees (ASTs), control-flow graphs (CFGs), and data-flow graphs (DFGs). These are core to how CodeQL models code behavior.
• Optional but helpful: familiarity with structural or functional programming languages (e.g. Lisp or OCaml) can make working with CodeQL’s query language and type system more intuitive. See overview of functional programming for related context.

Repository Layout

Core Structure

• Repository is based on: https://github.com/github/vscode-codeql-starter.git
• All development work is done on the branch: qllab

• CodeQL version is pinned via the ql/ submodule:

  commit 4d681f05bd671f8b5e31624f16a2b4d75e61c071 (tag: codeql-cli/v2.22.0)
  

• A prebuilt CodeQL CLI binary is included:

  1104625939  assets/codeql-osx64.zip
  

• Project-specific repositories can be added directly under the root. Example: the C dataflow workshop in ./codeql-dataflow-sql-injection

Additional Structure Notes

• The original upstream README.md is preserved at ./README-vscode-codeql-starter.md