git/contrib/coccinelle
René Scharfe 177fbab747 coccinelle: use COPY_ARRAY for copying arrays
The current semantic patch for COPY_ARRAY transforms memcpy(3) calls on
pointers, but Coccinelle distinguishes them from arrays.  It already
contains three rules to handle the options for sizeof (i.e. source,
destination and type), and handling arrays as source and destination
would require four times as many rules if we enumerated all cases.

We also don't handle array subscripts, and supporting that would
increase the number of rules by another factor of four.  (An isomorphism
telling Coccinelle that "sizeof x[...]" is equivalent to "sizeof *x"
would be nice..)

Support arrays and array subscripts, but keep the number of rules down
by adding normalization steps: First turn array subscripts into
derefences, then determine the types of expressions used with sizeof and
replace them with these types, and then convert the different possible
combinations of arrays and pointers with memcpy(3) to COPY_ARRAY.

Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2019-06-17 18:14:59 -07:00
..
.gitignore gitignore: ignore output files of coccicheck make target 2016-09-27 14:02:19 -07:00
README coccicheck: introduce 'pending' semantic patches 2018-11-14 11:22:36 +09:00
array.cocci coccinelle: use COPY_ARRAY for copying arrays 2019-06-17 18:14:59 -07:00
commit.cocci commit.c: add repo_get_commit_tree() 2019-04-16 18:56:51 +09:00
flex_alloc.cocci cocci: FLEX_ALLOC_MEM to FLEX_ALLOC_STR 2019-04-04 18:22:30 +09:00
free.cocci coccinelle: polish FREE_AND_NULL rules 2017-06-29 10:46:16 -07:00
object_id.cocci cache: make oidcpy always copy GIT_MAX_RAWSZ bytes 2019-01-15 09:57:41 -08:00
preincr.cocci cocci: simplify "if (++u > 1)" to "if (u++)" 2018-10-24 10:10:10 +09:00
qsort.cocci remove unnecessary check before QSORT 2016-09-29 15:42:18 -07:00
strbuf.cocci strbuf.cocci: suggest strbuf_addbuf() to add one strbuf to an other 2019-01-27 16:21:09 -08:00
swap.cocci add SWAP macro 2017-01-30 14:07:45 -08:00
the_repository.pending.cocci pretty: prepare format_commit_message to handle arbitrary repositories 2018-11-14 17:22:40 +09:00
xstrdup_or_null.cocci abspath: add absolute_pathdup() 2017-01-26 14:51:06 -08:00

README

This directory provides examples of Coccinelle (http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/)
semantic patches that might be useful to developers.

There are two types of semantic patches:

 * Using the semantic transformation to check for bad patterns in the code;
   The target 'make coccicheck' is designed to check for these patterns and
   it is expected that any resulting patch indicates a regression.
   The patches resulting from 'make coccicheck' are small and infrequent,
   so once they are found, they can be sent to the mailing list as per usual.

   Example for introducing new patterns:
   67947c34ae (convert "hashcmp() != 0" to "!hasheq()", 2018-08-28)
   b84c783882 (fsck: s/++i > 1/i++/, 2018-10-24)

   Example of fixes using this approach:
   248f66ed8e (run-command: use strbuf_addstr() for adding a string to
               a strbuf, 2018-03-25)
   f919ffebed (Use MOVE_ARRAY, 2018-01-22)

   These types of semantic patches are usually part of testing, c.f.
   0860a7641b (travis-ci: fail if Coccinelle static analysis found something
               to transform, 2018-07-23)

 * Using semantic transformations in large scale refactorings throughout
   the code base.

   When applying the semantic patch into a real patch, sending it to the
   mailing list in the usual way, such a patch would be expected to have a
   lot of textual and semantic conflicts as such large scale refactorings
   change function signatures that are used widely in the code base.
   A textual conflict would arise if surrounding code near any call of such
   function changes. A semantic conflict arises when other patch series in
   flight introduce calls to such functions.

   So to aid these large scale refactorings, semantic patches can be used.
   However we do not want to store them in the same place as the checks for
   bad patterns, as then automated builds would fail.
   That is why semantic patches 'contrib/coccinelle/*.pending.cocci'
   are ignored for checks, and can be applied using 'make coccicheck-pending'.

   This allows to expose plans of pending large scale refactorings without
   impacting the bad pattern checks.