Re: checkpatch.pl false positive: FSF mailing address

[Brian Norris]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:08 AM, Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, 2016-03-10 at 11:00 -0800, Brian Norris wrote:
>> Hi Joe,
>
> Hi Brian.
>
>> I found this false positive amusing:
>>
>> $ curl http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/577786/mbox/ | scripts/checkpatch.pl -
>> [...]
>> ERROR: Do not include the paragraph about writing to the Free Software
>> Foundation's mailing address from the sample GPL notice. The FSF has
>> changed addresses in the past, and may do so again. Linux already
>> includes a copy of the GPL.
>> #1489: FILE: drivers/mtd/nand/qcom_nandc.c:1335:
>> +^I^I * write to the free oob area.$
>> [...]
>>
>> The patch is:
>>   http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/577786/
>>   [PATCH v8,2/3] mtd: nand: Qualcomm NAND controller driver
>>
>> and the comment text is:
>>
>>   "For the last codeword, we skip the bbm positions and write to the
>>   free oob area."
>>
>> which matches on this:
>>
>> # Check for FSF mailing addresses.
>>                 if ($rawline =~ /\bwrite to the Free/i ||
>>
>> I'm just writing as recommended by the closing text of your tool.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Yeah, it's amusing.  It's also likely not something worth
> bothering with though as the likelihood of fixing it is low
> and eventually the FSF warning will be minimized or removed
> as no longer necessary.

An easy improvement: don't use "ignore case" for the regex.

> checkpatch is stupid, false positives will always exist.

Regards,
Brian