Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com> said:
> Jamie Lokier wrote:
[...]
> The tool which I envision need only handle simple stuff at first. As
> long as the source code analyzer knows C code at a semantic level, I
> need only write extra rules / regexes to catch basic but very common
> driver code errors.
> It is too much to ask "kernel-lint" to puzzle through page cache flag
> arcana for example, but I can think of a ton of simple things that a
> kernel-lint tool could scan for that would be useful..
> * divide by power of two, instead of shifting
Bug your neighborly compiler writer to optimize that one
> * calling pci_find_xxx functions without pci_enable_device somewhere in
> the driver
grep(1)
> * calling MOD_INC_USE_COUNT in a function AFTER a call to request_irq or
> a similar function which may sleep
A bit of perl perhaps?
> It's still a tall order to handle simple stuff like this.. Further, it
> is granted that all rules are generally broken for a good reason at
> least once. but such a tool IMHO would be invaluable to people
> maintaining kernel drivers.
What is truly needed is to be able to check properties over all paths, like
that locks are taken (or not, as may be) and then released; that interrupts
are (or not) turned off, etc. Local stuff like the above is (somewhat) easy
to check with existing tools, perhaps adding a bit of cpp hackery to
#define stuff so it screams #error when it is used wrong or used when it
shouldn't be (just to be used as a #included sanity gcc run check, not in
production), etc.
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