Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] More useful types in the linux kernel

[Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>]

On Tue 19-07-16 19:08:12, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> writes:
> > On Tue, 2016-07-19 at 10:32 -0500, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> >> Historically the types in C came about because the machines
> >> fundamentally supported different data types either with different
> >> sizes or different characteristics (i.e. u8, u16, float, double).
> >> These data types and the C type system were built so programmers
> >> could tell the machine what they needed it to do.
> >> 
> >> There is another genesis of types that started with the simply typed
> >> lambda calculs that is about eliminating common errors and otherwise
> >> helping a programmer get their code right.
> >> 
> >> In the years since C was invented there has been a lot of activity
> >> and a
> >> little bit of progress in this area.  Would people be receptive to
> >> improvements in this area?
> >> 
> >> I would like to talk to folks and gague what it would take to make
> >> improvements in this area acceptable, practical, and useful.
> >> 
> >> Would a gcc plugin that checks the most interesting things that 
> >> sparse checks on every build be interesting? (endianness of integer 
> >> types for example)
> >
> > How would this be different from simply automatically running sparse in
> > the kernel build if the binary is present (effectively making make C=1
> > the default)?
> 
> Nothing.  I am just honestly looking at ways that we can get things to
> always or almost always run.   Sparse isn't getting run regularly now so
> I was suspect that would not be as good of a solution.

Isn't sparse run by 0-day testing? I thought it is...


								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
SUSE Labs, CR