Re: [PATCH 02/18] Add a new builtin: branch-diff

On 04/05/18 07:40, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
[snip] 

BTW I ran `make sparse` for the first time, and it spits out tons of
stuff. And I notice that they are all non-fatal warnings, but so were the
ones you pointed out above. This is a bit sad, as I would *love* to
install a VSTS build job to run `make sparse` automatically. Examples of
warnings *after* applying your patch:

connect.c:481:40: warning: incorrect type in argument 2 (invalid types)
connect.c:481:40:    expected union __CONST_SOCKADDR_ARG [usertype] __addr
connect.c:481:40:    got struct sockaddr *ai_addr

or

pack-revindex.c:65:23: warning: memset with byte count of 262144

What gives?

My stock answer, until recently, was that you are using a very
old version of sparse. Which is probably still true here - but
I recently noticed that more up-to-date platforms/gcc versions
also have many problems. (The main sparse contributors tend to
stick with conservative distros and/or don't use sparse on any
software that uses system headers - thus they tend not to notice
the problems caused by new gcc/glibc versions! ;-) )

Since I am on Linux Mint 18.3 (based on the last Ubuntu LTS) and
build sparse from source, the current 'master', 'next' and 'pu'
branches are all 'sparse-clean' for me. (On cygwin, which is
built with NO_REGEX, I have a single sparse warning).

I was just about to say that, unusually for me, I was using a
sparse built from a release tag, but then remembered that I have
some additional patches which fixes a problem on fedora 27!
Using sparse on fedora 27 is otherwise useless. (There are still
many warnings spewed on f27 - but they are caused by incorrect
system headers :( ).

The current release of sparse is v0.5.2, which probably hasn't
been included in any distro yet (I think the previous release
v0.5.1, which should also work for you, is in Debian unstable).
If you wanted to try building a more up-to-date sparse, the repo
is at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/sparse/sparse.git.

Linux Mint 19, which will be released in about a month, will be
using the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS as a base, so I guess it is possible
that I will need to debug sparse again ...

BTW, I spent some time last night playing with 'git-branch-diff'.

First of all - Good Job! This tool will be very useful (thanks
also go to Thomas, of course).

I noticed that there seemed to be an occasional 'whitespace error'
indicator (red background) directly after an +/- change character
which I suspect is an error (I haven't actually checked). However,
this indicator disappears if you add the --dual-color option.

Thanks!

ATB,
Ramsay Jones