Ævar recently sent a series that made pretty extensive use of coccinelle
to remove a lot of the_repository [1], but then we ended up in this
weird spot where even though several reviewers thought the code changes
looked good, we weren't sure about giving Reviewed-By because we didn't
know coccinelle or how to review it.
I'm pretty sure that the series could have been merged without a hitch
if reviewers knew what to do about coccinelle. I expect more of these to
appear as a result of the libification work, so it's probably a good
time for us to figure out some norms about coccinelle :)
Perhaps we could start the discussion by sharing thoughts on the
following questions, which I'll summarize in a change to
contrib/coccinelle/README (where we can do final bikeshedding):
- Is it okay to give Reviewed-By on the basis of _just_ the in-tree
changes and ignore the .cocci patch?
- If not, what should reviewers look for in .cocci? Do we have a
style?
- When do we introduce .pending.cocci vs .cocci?
- What do we do with .cocci after they've been applied?
- Do we care about new patches slowing down coccicheck?
Relevant threads
- How to learn cocci: https://lore.kernel.org/git/230326.86edpcw0yh.gmgdl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
- https://lore.kernel.org/git/230328.86a5zxw31u.gmgdl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
- https://lore.kernel.org/git/230326.86ileow1fu.gmgdl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/cover-v2-00.17-00000000000-20230328T110946Z-avarab@xxxxxxxxx/
