Re: Full subsystem codebase scan for identifying pre-existing issues?

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 01:34:10PM -0700, Joanne Koong wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there a way for Sashiko to run a full scan of a subsystem/tree to
> identify all the pre-existing issues so that they can be fixed
> proactively?

At the moment, no. At least nothing that I am aware of :)

There have been some small conversations about such functionality, but nothing
has really taken shape yet. One of the concerns was trying to validate the sheer
number of potential-false-positives, and how to present such information in an
actionable manner. IIRC syzbot/syzkaller's way of storing such data was used as
a comparison point here.

FWIW, Chris Mason has a repository for a tool that runs such scans on codebases
-- paired with tools like semcode. His prompts are the same ones that we
frequently sync back to Sashiko. It won't solve the other point you made, but it
may be worth looking into. [0][1]

> Currently, they're flagged on patch reviews, which can be
> a bit frustrating for contributors who didn't introduce the problem,
> and adds a bit of noise for maintainers/reviewers looking at the
> Sashiko report.

Unfortunately, you aren't the first to report a problem with these.

Currently, in the 11th stage instruction in the code, pre-existing issues are
propagated in the report like so:

<snip>

CRITICAL RULE: If a finding is flagged as pre-existing (`\"preexisting\":
true`), you MUST explicitly state in your inline comment that this issue is
pre-existing and was not introduced by the patch under review. Use phrasing like
\"This isn't a bug introduced by this patch, but...\" or \"This is a
pre-existing issue, but...\" to start the comment.

</snip>

Instead of them replying inline with "This isn't a bug introduced by this patch,
but by..." or "This is a pre-existing issue, but does..." how would you like to
see this information presented/conveyed?

I created an issue here [2]

> 
> Thanks,
> Joanne
> 

[0] https://github.com/masoncl/kres
[1] https://github.com/masoncl/review-prompts
[2] https://github.com/sashiko-dev/sashiko/issues/381

Thanks,

-- 
Derek <[email protected]>