Re: [cocci] Evolution of transformation processes?

[Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@intel.com>]

On 3/8/2025 1:45 AM, Markus Elfring wrote:
>> In particular, about my project:
>>
>> We have a repository with code that is originally designed to be shared
>> among multiple drivers. This code uses constructs like "ice_free", or
>> typecasts required for C++, but which the Linux kernel does not. We need
>> the code we ultimately contribute to the kernel to follow the kernel
>> guidelines.
>>
>> The semantic patches are applied automatically as part of the build
>> process, and not something we commit. This process was done in order to
>> try and align what we distribute in our out-of-tree releases with what
>> we end up submitting to the kernel community.
> 
> Thanks for such background information.
> 
> 
>> This usage is likely different from many projects where the patches are
>> used to find and commit fixed code. In our case, committing the result
>> (and thus being able to manually tweak it) are not viable because that
>> would break other downstream consumers of this code internally.
> 
> * How much do you still need to recheck results from automated data processing?
> 

We do have some monitoring to check if the output changes when we update
the coccinelle version, but otherwise don't manually check each time we
run the same script.

> * Would you like to achieve reasonably low system failure rates?
> 

In our setup, we only use patches which have very low failure rates.
This is a requirement because they are applied automatically and
expected to be consistent and catch all the changes we care about. In
most cases, the failure rate must be zero or else the resulting code
will not compile.