Re: [PATCH] Makefile: add pending semantic patches

SZEDER Gábor [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

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inifinite recursion)?  Or are they "correct but not immediately
necessary" (e.g. because calling read_cache() does not hurt until
that function gets removed, so rewriting the callers to call
read_index() with &the_index may be correct but not immediately
necessary)?

the latter. I assume correctness (of the semantic patch) to be a given,

I'm afraid we can't assume that.  As far as correctness is concerned,
I think semantic patches are not different from any other code we
write, i.e. they are potentially buggy.  Perhaps even more so than the
"usual" Git code, because we have long experience writing C and shell
code (with all their quirks and error-proneness), but none of us is
really an expert in writing semantic patches.

All correct.

And applying semantic patches generated from buggy sources can
produce buggy code, just like merging a buggy topic branch does.

These days, I ran coccicheck at the tip of 'pu' (even though this
cost me quite a lot a few times every day) and feed its findings
back to authors of topics that introduce new ones, so that their
topics next time do not need the fix-up at the tip of 'pu' in the
next integration cycle.  That way, the changes mechanically
suggested by coccicheck can still be reviewed in small bite-sized
chunks and hopefully possible problems caused by buggy sources can
either be found in the review process, or discovered at the tip of
'pu'.