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Message-ID: <f665ec7b21527c7095a61dd5c2f48fd00df0d5c9.camel@perches.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH linux-kselftest/test v6] lib/list-test: add a test for
 the 'list' doubly linked list
From:   Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
To:     Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>, shuah <shuah@kernel.org>
Cc:     David Gow <davidgow@google.com>,
        Brendan Higgins <brendanhiggins@google.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
        "open list:KERNEL SELFTEST FRAMEWORK" 
        <linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org>, kunit-dev@googlegroups.com,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Date:   Wed, 30 Oct 2019 12:23:45 -0700
In-Reply-To: <20191030191255.GD18421@kadam>
References: <20191024224631.118656-1-davidgow@google.com>
         <0cb1d948-0da3-eb0f-c58f-ae3a785dd0dd@kernel.org>
         <CABVgOSmCHbGjZBjeWSbPEZbJw22SaBQnoO77xxNzN_ugAwzNiQ@mail.gmail.com>
         <20191030104217.GA18421@kadam>
         <42a8270d-ed6f-d29f-5e71-7b76a074b63e@kernel.org>
         <20191030191255.GD18421@kadam>
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On Wed, 2019-10-30 at 22:12 +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 10:27:12AM -0600, shuah wrote:
> > > It's better to ignore checkpatch and other scripts when they are wrong.
> > > (unless the warning message inspires you to make the code more readable
> > > for humans).
> > > 
> > 
> > It gets confusing when to ignore and when not to. It takes work to
> > figure out and it is subjective.
> > 
> 
> In this case, it's not subjective because checkpatch is clearly not
> working as intended.

checkpatch _is_ working as intended.
It was never intended to be perfect.

checkpatch _always_ depended on a reviewer deciding
whether its output was appropriate.

> I don't feel like "checkpatch clean" is a useful criteria for applying
> patches.

Nor do I.

> The other things about warnings is that I always encourage people to
> just ignore old warnings.  If you're running Smatch and you see a
> warning in ancient code that means I saw it five years ago and didn't
> fix it so it's a false positive.  Old warnings are always 100% false
> positives.

That'd be not absolute either because it depended on your
historical judgment as to whether an old warning was in fact
a defect or not.

People make mistakes.
Regex based scripts are by design stupid and untrustworthy.

Mistakes will be made.
Just fix the actual defects in code as soon as possible.