Re: [bitbake-devel] [PATCH] parse: warn on trailing whitespace after line continuation backslash

On 2026-08-04 12:27, Richard Purdie wrote:
> On Tue, 2026-08-04 at 11:08 +0200, Jaipaul Cheernam via lists.openembedded.org wrote:
>> rstrip() is called before checking for backslash, so trailing spaces or
>> tabs after "\" go unnoticed. For example:
>>
>>      file://foo.patch \<TAB>
>>      file://bar.patch \
>>
>> The first line has a trailing tab after the backslash that is invisible
>> but ends up in patch context, causing patches to fail to apply on trees
>> where it was cleaned up.
>>
>> Emit a warning when this is detected so developers can fix it early.
>>
>> Tested with bitbake-selftest:
>>    $ python3 -m unittest lib.bb.tests.parse.ParseTest.test_parse_trailing_whitespace_continuation -v
>>    $ python3 -m unittest lib.bb.tests.parse.ParseTest.test_parse_clean_continuation_no_warning -v
>>
>>    2 tests OK
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Jaipaul Cheernam <[email protected]>
>> ---
>> Problem:
>> Ran into this while submitting libssh2 CVE patches to both master and
>> wrynose. The libssh2_1.11.1.bb on master has a stray tab after the
>> backslash on the CVE-2025-15661-3.patch line. Patches adding new file://
>> lines below it applied fine on master but git-am refused them on wrynose
>> because that branch doesn't have the trailing tab — context mismatch.
> This seems like a lot of code and complexity for what is in reality quite a minor issue which
> whilst annoying, doesn't actually break anything?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard


  Hi Richard,

   Fair point — it doesn't break parsing itself and the code churn is 
larger than ideal for a warning.

   Would you prefer if I just submitted the oe-core fixes to clean up 
the affected recipes instead and dropped this bitbake change? That 
solves the immediate problem without adding complexity to the parser.

   Alternatively, I could reduce this to a bb.note() (debug-level) so 
it's only visible with -v, keeping it minimal.

   Happy to go either way.

Thanks