Re: The sheer number of sparse warnings in the kernel

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

On 02/26/2014 03:29 PM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 03:28:59PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 02:49:26PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>> The number of sparse errors in the current kernel is staggering, and it
>>> makes sparse a lot less valuable of a tool that it otherwise could be.
>>> On a build of x86-64 allyesconfig I'm getting 20,676 sparse messages.
>>> Out of those, 12,358 come from linux/err.h.  Given that the latter
>>> basically spams *everything*, I can only conclude that almost noone uses
>>> sparse unless they have a filter script.
>>
>> What errors are you seeing from err.h?  I don't see those when building
>> different subdirectories with sparse (which is how I normally use it.)
>>
>> And what version of sparse are you running:
>> 	$ sparse --version
>> 	v0.4.5-rc1-407-g345e8943fc36
> 
> Ah, 0.5.0 is now out, maybe you should update to that version?
> 

Yes... it looks like the 0.4.5-rc1 that shipped in Fedora is indeed out
of date.  With 0.5.0 I "only" see 8,207 messages, which means that at
least the linux/err.h issue is gone.

	-hpa