Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] Documentation: dev-tools: Enhance static analysis section with discussion

Julia Lawall <[email protected]> Wed, 30 Mar 2022 10:07:49 +0200 (CEST)
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.smatch,fr.inria.cocci,org.kernel.vger.linux-doc,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kernel.vger.linux-sparse
Message-ID <alpine.DEB.2.22.394.2203301007190.2592@hadrien>
> > +Strong points of Smatch and Coccinelle
> > +--------------------------------------
> > +
> > +Coccinelle is probably the easiest for writing checks. It works before the
> > +pre-compiler so it's easier to check for bugs in macros using Coccinelle.
> > +Coccinelle also writes patches fixes for you which no other tool does.
> > +
> > +With Coccinelle you can do a mass conversion from
>
> (Maybe start this with "For example," just to make it clear that this
> paragraph is mostly following on from how useful it is that Coccinelle
> produces fixes, not just warnings.)

I also suggested "for example", in a different place, but either is fine.

julia

>
> > +``kmalloc(x * size, GFP_KERNEL)`` to ``kmalloc_array(x, size, GFP_KERNEL)``, and
> > +that's really useful. If you just created a Smatch warning and try to push the
> > +work of converting on to the maintainers they would be annoyed. You'd have to
> > +argue about each warning if can really overflow or not.
> > +
> > +Coccinelle does no analysis of variable values, which is the strong point of
> > +Smatch. On the other hand, Coccinelle allows you to do simple things in a simple
> > +way.
> > --
> > 2.35.1
> >
>