Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Use error_fatal to simplify obvious fatal errors

[Markus Armbruster]

Marcel Apfelbaum <address@hidden> writes:

> On 12/10/2015 02:34 PM, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> Marcel Apfelbaum <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> On 12/10/2015 12:19 PM, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>>>> Done with this admittedly crude Coccinelle semantic patch with manual
>>>> burial of dead Error * variables squashed in:
[...]
>>>
>>> That's so cool!
>>
>> I'm afraid my sledgehammer approach to Coccinelle would make its
>> inventors wince...
>>
>>> Isn't it the time to have our own Coccinelle directory
>>> with scripts like this?
>>
>> Could do that if there's interest.
>>
>>>                          And to make them part of make check?
>>
>> I'm afraid that's not practical.  spatch solves a difficult problem, and
>> takes its own sweet time to do it.
>
> So it takes a long time to run. We could make it depend on an
> environment variable,
> so at least the maintainers will run it :)
>
> My point is, now we *could* have a guarantee that if anyone uses the old
> way, we can catch it in time. It can be easily lost in the review process.

In my experience, to reduce recurrence of an unwanted code pattern, you
first need to get rid of the bad examples in the tree.  Without that,
it's basically futile.

For the ones that keep coming back, further steps may be in order, such
as making checkpatch complain.

> Anyway, it was only a thought.

It's not without merit.

>>> Is a pity to have them lost into a git comment...