v0.4 (2007-09-15)

I have tagged and tarballed Sparse 0.4, now available from http://kernel.org/pub/software/devel/sparse/dist/sparse-0.4.tar.gz, with sha1sum a77a10174c8cdb5314eb5000c1e4f24458848b91.

Highlights and visible changes in this release:

  • The Sparse validation files have become an automated test suite, invoked via ‘make check’. Thanks to Damien Lespiau for the initial ‘test-suite’ script. Also thanks to Pavel Roskin for ideas, discussion, and prototyping, and to the contributors of new test cases and test-suite metadata for existing test cases.

  • New backend ‘c2xml’ by Rob Taylor, which outputs an XML representation of the variable declarations, function declarations, and data structures in a C file.

  • ‘sparse’ and ‘cgcc’ now have manpages.

  • Warning changes:

    • Warn on ‘return <void expression>;’ if given ‘-Wreturn-void’; off by default because the C99 standard permits this.

    • Sparse now defaults to -Wno-do-while.

    • Sparse now defaults to -Wdecl.

    • -Wno-old-initializer turns off warnings about non-C99 struct initializers

    • -Wno-non-pointer-null turns off warnings about using a plain integer as a NULL pointer

    • Initializer entries defined twice and bitfields without explicit signs have changed from errors to warnings.

  • ‘cgcc’ no longer passes ‘-Wall’ to ‘sparse’ if given ‘-Wall’ on the command line. ‘-Wall’ turns on all Sparse warnings, including experimental and noisy ones. Don’t include it just because a project wants to pass ‘-Wall’ to ‘cc’. If you really want ‘cgcc’ to run ‘sparse’ with ‘-Wall’, set ‘CHECK=’sparse -Wall’’

  • Support for more builtin functions: ‘__builtin_labs’, ‘__builtin_offsetof’, ‘__builtin_strcat’, ‘__builtin_strncat’, and ‘__builtin_strlen’.

  • Support for more attributes: ‘constructor’, ‘destructor’, ‘__always_inline__’, ‘__noinline__’, ‘used’, ‘__syscall_linkage__’, ‘format_arg’, ‘cdecl’, ‘stdcall’, ‘fastcall’, ‘dllimport’, and ‘dllexport’.

  • Support for the ‘__DATE__’ and ‘__TIME__’ preprocessor symbols.

  • Support for ‘__alignof’ (treated like the existing ‘__alignof__’).

  • typeof(bitwise_type) now produces the same type, not an incompatible type; thanks to Al Viro.

  • Various profile-driven optimizations and changes to compiler optimization flags, making Sparse significantly faster.

  • Numerous fixes to C standards compliance, thanks to Al Viro. In particular:

    • Sparse now requires integer constant expressions in various places, not arbitrary expressions.

    • Sparse now handles NULL pointer constants more correctly.

    • Sparse now resolves pointer types more correctly in conditional expressions

  • The ‘graph’ backend now outputs significantly better program graphs, and the Sparse source code includes some ‘gvpr’ scripts to modify these graphs in various ways, such as only showing the callers or callees of particular functions. Thanks to Dan Sheridan.

  • Linux-style ‘make’ output; for a more verbose make with full command lines, ‘make V=1’. Thanks to Damien Lespiau.

  • Numerous bugfixes and internal cleanups; thanks to the many Sparse contributors.

Full changelog:

Al Viro (51):

  • handle __alignof as equivalent of __alignof__

  • saner reporting of overlaps in initializers

  • check for whitespace before object-like macro body

  • fix alignment for _Bool

  • fix interaction of typeof with bitwise types

  • better recovery from bad operations on bitwise

  • make copying of EXPR_INDEX non-lazy

  • tie the fields of struct in simple list

  • rewrite of initializer handling

  • fix handling of typeof on structs

  • missing NULL checks in initializer handling

  • take cast_to() out of usual_conversions(), do it in callers

  • mechanically split compatible_assignment_types()

  • null pointer constants have no special meaning for pointer subtraction

  • remove long-dead variable in evaluate_ptr_add()

  • remove useless argument in evaluate_ptr_sub()

  • cleanup of evaluate_assign_op()

  • clean up the typechecking in arithmetics

  • clean up usual_conversions(), kill evaluate_shift()

  • fix index conversions in evaluate_ptr_add()

  • fix default argument promotion

  • move degenerate() down into compatible_assignment_types()

  • in case of compound literal we want to delay examining type

  • warn on return <void expression>;

  • deal with enum members without excessive PITA

  • implement __builtin_offsetof()

  • fix handling of integer constant expressions

  • fix the comma handling in integer constant expressions

  • first pass at null pointer constants

  • make size_t better approximate the reality

  • fix handling of address_space in casts and assignments

  • fix handling of pointers in ?:

  • saner show_type()

  • clean up evaluate_sign()

  • integer_promotions() can’t get SYM_NODE or SYM_ENUM

  • start cleaning type_difference()

  • get compatible_assignment_types() deal with all cases

  • fix the sanity check in evaluate_ptr_sub()

  • rewrite type_difference()

  • deal correctly with qualifiers on arrays

  • add __builtin_strlen()

  • no such thing as array of functions

  • new helper: unfoul()

  • handling of typeof in evaluate_member_dereference()

  • file and global scopes are the same for purposes of struct redefining

  • …,array should degenerate

  • sanitize evaluate_ptr_add(), start checking for pointers to functions

  • fix evaluate_compare()

  • sanitize evaluate_postop()

  • saner -Wtypesign

  • braino in conditional_expression()

Alberto Bertogli (1):

  • Implement x86-64 support in cgcc.

Alexey Dobriyan (2):

  • Fix infinite loop in free_preprocessor_line()

  • Fix -E handling

Christopher Li (2):

  • combinations string clean up

  • Pass a bitmask of keywords to handle_attributes

Damien Lespiau (6):

  • Change sparse homepage in ctags headers.

  • __DATE__ & __TIME expansion

  • Beautify all & install Makefile targets

  • test-suite: a tiny test automation script

  • test-suite documentation

  • Sample test-suite test cases

Dan Sheridan (2):

  • Improved graph generation using subgraph clusters for functions

  • Add gvpr-based post-processing for graphs

Josh Triplett (118):

  • Fix website and repository references in FAQ

  • Fix the version number

  • Remove old version note.

  • gitweb lives at git.kernel.org now.

  • Add a “make dist” that requires $(VERSION) to match ‘git describe’

  • Add test case for __asm__ __volatile__(…)

  • Make cgcc not pass -Wall to sparse even if passing it to cc

  • Teach cgcc about all currently existing sparse warning options

  • Teach cgcc about -ventry and -vdead

  • Parse asm after a label as a statement, not an attribute

  • Add test case for stdcall and cdecl attributes.

  • Add -Wno-old-initializer to turn off warnings about non-C99 struct initializers

  • Add test case for -Wno-old-initializer

  • Revert unintentional inclusion of warning fix in previous commit.

  • Use %td when printing a ptrdiff_t to avoid problems on 64-bit platforms

  • Remove extra space.

  • Add shebang to gvpr scripts, make them executable, and change usage accordingly

  • Fix an __attribute__() parsing error

  • Expand calling convention test case to cover fastcall

  • Add -Wno-non-pointer-null to turn off warning about using a plain integer as a NULL pointer

  • Add __builtin_strcat and __builtin_strncat.

  • Ignore the GCC constructor and destructor attributes

  • Remove inaccurate comment designating some attributes as windows-specific.

  • Move the ident for defined() into the preprocessor section.

  • Reorganize attribute list for readability.

  • Add double-underscore variant __always_inline__.

  • Add double-underscore variant __noinline__.

  • Add no-double-underscore variant “used”, ignored like “__used__”.

  • Add double-underscore variant __syscall_linkage__.

  • Add no-double-underscore variant format_arg.

  • Add explanatory comment about direct use of __IDENT for preprocessor idents.

  • Sparse always defines __STDC__ 1, so cgcc does not need to do so

  • Fix old typo: s/wierd/weird/

  • Canonicalize URL in FAQ: add www., add trailing slash

  • Change “LD” to “LINK” in Makefile prettyprinting.

  • Makefile prettyprinting: make INSTALL and other output line up correctly

  • Add test case for infinite loop in free_preprocessor_line()

  • Turn on -Wdecl by default.

  • ctags: Use const as appropriate in cmp_sym()

  • validation/old-initializer.c: Make the_s static to avoid extraneous warning.

  • validation/restricted-typeof.c: Make globals static to avoid extraneous warnings.

  • validation/escapes.c: Make globals static to avoid extraneous warnings.

  • validation/non-pointer-null.c: Make global static to avoid extraneous warning.

  • Merge commit ‘viro/integer-constant’

  • Move all the preprocessor tests into validation/preprocessor/

  • Move test-suite output files to validation/.gitignore

  • .gitignore: Stop ignoring all dotfiles

  • validation: Update comments for current Sparse behavior and test-suite.

  • Add test-suite comments to all the obvious preprocessor tests

  • Make preprocessor-loop a normal numbered preprocessor test

  • Add test-suite comment to preprocessor21.

  • Add test-suite comment to address_space.c

  • Make clean depend on clean-check

  • Rename asm-volatile to better describe what it tests

  • Add test-suite comment to label-asm.c

  • Remove “check-exit-value: 0” and rely on default; remove extra blank line.

  • Add test-suite comment to bad-array-designated-initializer.c

  • Add c2xml to .gitignore

  • Split c2xml build rule into compile and link stages, and add the quiet prefixes

  • expression.h needs lib.h for struct position and symbol.h for int_ctype

  • Fix GCC warnings in c2xml

  • Fix sparse warnings in c2xml: mark globals static and remove unused globals

  • Fix test-suite to handle stdout and stderr separately, and fix up tests

  • Add test-suite metadata to bad-cast.c

  • Add test-suite metadata to bad-ternary-cond.c, and remove now-redundant comment

  • Add test-suite metadata to initializer-entry-defined-twice.c

  • Add test-suite metadata to context.c

  • Add test-suite metadata to escapes.c

  • Add test-suite metadata to calling-convention-attributes.c

  • Fix typos in test-suite documentation

  • Makefile: stop cleaning files we didn’t make and have no business cleaning

  • Add test-suite metadata to old-initializer.c; also test with -Wno-initializer

  • allocate.h: Stop needlessly returning a void value in __DO_ALLOCATOR

  • Turn off -Wdo-while by default.

  • Add test-suite metadata to label-attr.c

  • validation/builtin_safe1.c: Show the unsafe macro argument

  • Make “Initializer entry defined twice” a warning, not an error

  • Remove explicit restatements of defaults in metadata for member_of_typeof test

  • Remove explicit restatements of defaults in metadata for outer-scope test

  • Remove explicit restatements of defaults in metadata for comma test

  • Add test case for comparing null pointer constant to int.

  • Makefile: Use -O2 -finline-functions, not just -O

  • cse: Size insn_hash_table more realistically, speeding up CSE significantly

  • Add some missing dependencies in the Makefile

  • Drop -fpic; it hurts performance and we don’t build libsparse.so by default

  • Add another test case to validation/comma.c

  • ctags: Handle some new namespaces and symbol types.

  • is_zero_constant: declare saved const

  • Add test case for -Wtypesign

  • Sort warning options in lib.c and lib.h

  • Rename Wcast_to_address_space to Wcast_to_as to match the command-line argument

  • Add a manpage for sparse

  • Install the Sparse manpage

  • cgcc: Sparse accepts -Wcast-to-as, not -Wcast-to-address-space

  • Rename Wundefined_preprocessor to Wundef to match the command-line argument

  • cgcc: Sparse accepts -Wundef, not -Wundefined-preprocessor

  • Use -fno-strict-aliasing, as the ptrlist code seems to violate C99 strict aliasing rules

  • Add test-suite annotations to restricted-typeof.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to double-semicolon.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to check_byte_count-ice.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to badtype4.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to varargs1.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to struct-attribute-placement.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to non-pointer-null.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to struct-ns1.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to noderef.c

  • Makefile: Use ?= to allow overriding OS or AR on the Make command line

  • FAQ: Point to URL on vger for subscription instructions and archives

  • README: recode from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8

  • validation: Rename typeconvert.c to integer-promotions.c to match its purpose

  • Add test-suite annotations to integer-promotions.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to cond_expr.c

  • Add test-suite annotations to function-pointer-modifier-inheritance.c

  • validation: Update comment in type1.c to reflect current state of Sparse

  • Add test-suite annotations to init-char-array.c

  • Add a manpage for cgcc

  • Add SEE ALSO for cgcc in sparse manpage

  • Makefile: VERSION=0.4

Kovarththanan Rajaratnam (1):

  • libxml compile fix on Cygwin

Michael Stefaniuc (3):

  • Ignore the cdecl and stdcall attributes for now.

  • Add test for typedef on pointer to function with stdcall attribute.

  • ‘?’ is a valid escape character defined by ANSI C. Its value is ‘?’.

Mike Frysinger (1):

  • Makefile: improve flag handling

Pavel Roskin (5):

  • Improve error message if using a member of an incomplete struct or union

  • Bitfield without explicit sign should be a warning, not an error

  • cgcc: preserve sparse exit code if -no-compile is used

  • Avoid use of libc headers in the validation suite

  • Fix warnings about undeclared globals, they are irrelevant to the test

Ramsay Jones (2):

  • Add (more) support for WIN32 attribute names

  • Add cygwin support to cgcc

Randy Dunlap (1):

  • add __builtin_labs()

Rob Taylor (4):

  • add end position to symbols

  • add sparse_keep_tokens api to lib.h

  • new get_type_name function

  • add c2xml program

Yura Pakhuchiy (1):

  • Make cgcc filter out all sparse warning related options

ricknu-0@student.ltu.se (4):

  • tokenize.c: Replace handwritten strncmp with existing function.

  • expression.c: Clean up match_oplist() and add missing va_end()

  • parse.c: Adding va_end().

  • tokenize.c: Simplify drop_stream_eoln().

– Josh Triplett