Re: CVS commit: src/lib/libc/stdio

[David Holland <dholland-sourcechanges%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 03:17:38PM +0300, Jukka Ruohonen wrote:
 > > > Perhaps we need a bot to watch all commits and send reminders like
 > > > "You added a new file, but you haven't updated the sets, see <URL>
 > > > for instructions", "You added a new sysctl node but you haven't
 > > > updated sysctl(7)", etc.
 > > 
 > > For this kind of stuff it should be easy enough to write some shell
 > > scripts that check consistency.
 > 
 > A simple look should reveal the inconsistency. So the first approach sounds
 > more fruitful.

Perhaps, but lint scripts can look every night or whatever and it
seems to me like a better choice.

 > But to me, the problem is that we need a good amount of manual labour to
 > keep those updated. Isn't this the kind of task where computers, not humans,
 > are good at? As we've talked about history, it is worth to remember that
 > those lists came from some early BSD where things were small and simple.

Yes. The trouble is that because libraries and headers don't match up,
you need to parse headers to extract the lists, and that seems likely
to end up being delicate and a constant source of annoyance. 

A crosscheck will fail if something unexpected appears, which is more
robust than trying to generate one from the other, where something
unexpected will probably result in silently outputting nonsense.

Anyway, can you (at your convenience) send me a list of the things
like this that need consistency checking? I will then have a shot at
writing some scripts and we can see what things look like.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost