> Will review in more detail later, but at first glance this looks quite
> good, and very capable.

I rebased the series against current HEAD to make testing easier.

> Two minor things that jump out at me:
>       * The need to specify the command line as "../sparse args $file"
>         seems somewhat inelegant.
solved: no path in check-command now.

>         Also, allowing an
>         alternate option "check-options" that just specifies sparse
>         flags seems useful, and the default command could do something
>         like "sparse $options $file"; that way, you can just say
>         "check-options: -E", or "check-options: -Wthingy".
Humm, not sure if it's _that_ much useful to have
         check-options: -E -Wthingy
instead of
         check-command: sparse -E -Wthingy $file
for some reason I find the later less confusing, a matter of taste I guess.

>       * The need to prefix every line of output, rather than delimiting
>         the start and end of the output, seems painful with large
>         amounts of output.
Agreed. that's why ./test-suite format helps building such tags

However I still run into a behavior that I cannot explain:

validation$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
----------
validation$ ../sparse -E preprocessor/preprocessor19.c

preprocessor/preprocessor19.c:4:9: warning: preprocessor token A redefined
preprocessor/preprocessor19.c:3:9: this was the original definition
y
----------
validation$ ../sparse -E preprocessor/preprocessor19.c 2> o 1> o && cat o

y
processor/preprocessor19.c:4:9: warning: preprocessor token A redefined
preprocessor/preprocessor19.c:3:9: this was the original definition
----------
validation$ ../sparse -E preprocessor/preprocessor19.c &> o && cat o
preprocessor/preprocessor19.c:4:9: warning: preprocessor token A redefined
preprocessor/preprocessor19.c:3:9: this was the original definition

y

If you look carefully the 2> 1> redirections have eaten "pre" of the first
"preprocessor". Using &> show a more suitable behavior but it seems
that &> is not supported by every Bourne shell (for instance dash (the
default /bin/sh of Ubuntu 7.04 does not support &>) Any idea ?

-- 
Damien