Re: net-PA Semi: Deletion of unnecessary checks before the function call "pci_dev_put"

Julia Lawall
2014-12-01T20:34:59Z

On Mon, 1 Dec 2014, Johannes Berg wrote:

> On Mon, 2014-12-01 at 02:34 +0100, SF Markus Elfring wrote:
>
> > > Some of those NULL pointer checks on input parameters may have been
> > > added subsequently to functions. So there may be older kernel versions
> > > out there in which those checks dont exists in some cases. If some of
> > > the now "cleaned up" code is backported to such a kernel chances are
> > > good that those missing checks are overseen. And then neither caller nor
> > > callee is doing the NULL pointer check.
>
> > I assume that a few backporters can tell you more about their corresponding
> > software development experiences.
> > http://www.do-not-panic.com/2014/04/automatic-linux-kernel-backporting-with-coccinelle.html
>
> In such cases we just provide an appropriate wrapper and replace callers
> of the original function by callers of the wrapper, typically with a
> #define.
>
> So this kind of evolution is no problem for the (automated) backports
> using the backports project - although it can be difficult to detect
> such a thing is needed.

That is exactly the problem...

julia