From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: SF Markus Elfring Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2017 08:19:48 +0000 Subject: Re: ALSA: nm256: Fine-tuning for three function implementations Message-Id: <2cbef557-5f89-c630-e108-14ef2ce6b41a@users.sourceforge.net> List-Id: References: <24f8c777-1eb4-e7e7-9371-79f32700c9dc@users.sourceforge.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: Takashi Iwai , alsa-devel@alsa-project.org Cc: Arvind Yadav , Takashi Sakamoto , kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org, LKML >>>> There is a general source code transformation pattern involved. >>>> So I find that it is systematic. >>>> >>>> But I did not dare to develop a script variant for the semantic patch >>>> language (Coccinelle software) which can handle all special use cases >>>> as a few of them are already demonstrated in this tiny patch series. >>> >>> Then you're doing everything by hands, >> >> I am navigating through possible changes around the pattern >> “Use common error handling code” mostly manually so far. >> >> >>> and can be wrong >> >> Such a possibility remains as usual. > > "As usual" doesn't suffice. There can be additional means be used to reduce the probability of undesired side effects. > It must be "almost perfect" for such a code refactoring. Can you get the impression that the shown transformation patterns were correctly applied for the source file “sound/pci/nm256/nm256.c”? > The damage by a overseen mistake is much higher than the merit by such a patch. Are there any more software developers and code reviewers available who would like to point another programming mistake out for this Linux module? > If the patch is about fixing a bug, it's a different story. How do “deviations” from the coding style and the evolution of object code size fit to this view here? > Or it's about a really trivial change (e.g. your sizeof() conversion > patches), I can check and apply easily. My update selection can contain also trivial adjustments. > But for other changes with more lines, it makes little sense. Do you need any more information to see and eventually accept the sense again? > Again, the risk of breakage increases while the merit is negligible. We disagree about corresponding benefits at the moment. Would any other contributors comment the situation a bit more? >>> -- that's the heart of the problem. >> >> There might be related opportunities for further improvements. >> Do you trust adjustments from an evolving tool more than >> my concrete contributions? > > Yes, loudly. I noticed that the development status of tools which you might find nice at the moment can be also questionable. > I stop at this point, as the rest is simply a repeat from the previous mail. Are you using a continuous integration system? Regards, Markus