[libvirt] Can we make sc_copyright_check non-fatal?

[Eric Blake]

On 10/08/2013 03:57 PM, Cole Robinson wrote:
> On 10/08/2013 05:48 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
>> On 10/08/2013 03:39 PM, Cole Robinson wrote:
>>> The copyright date syntax check is a source of frustration for me:
>>>
>>> - It fails on old maint branches.
>>
>> In general, 'make syntax-check' is NOT guaranteed to work on maint
>> branches, nor is it worth trying to make it work there.  If anything,
>> the best thing to do would be figuring out how to patch 'make
>> syntax-check' to be a complete no-op on maint branches and only operate
>> on a (descendant of) the master branch, precisely because out-of-order
>> backports to maint branches makes it practically impossible to guarantee
>> that we can consistently meet whatever style future development on the
>> master branch decides is now in vogue.
>>
> 
> Agreed on that for the most part. It can still be beneficial to run,
> particularly after a hairy backport though, and it's frustrating to be blocked
> on something like a copyright date. But you're right that we can never
> guarantee it will continue to work.

You can always run 'make -k syntax-check' or even 'make sc_name_of_test'
to keep going or limit the checking to the subset of tests you care about.

> 
>>>
>>> - It pokes into non git managed directories in $(srcdir).
>>
>> That's probably a bug, and we should be able to fix it upstream in
>> gnulib.  Syntax checkers should be able to be limited to just git files.
>>  I guess the idea was that it checks non-managed files to ensure a
>> tarball doesn't have generated files with a broken copyright date, but
>> there's probably a better way to do that.
>>
> 
> That's my main complaint, so if it's fixed, I'll be satisfied. Thanks.

I'll try and look at it, then.

> 
> But really any test that is basically going to hinder normal work by demanding
> a gnulib update on January 1st just seems ill advised IMO.

Copyright law is annoying that way.  Since libvirt.git can be considered
a form of public distribution, and since the GPL only works if you
assert copyright correctly, this is one case where legal paranoia was
deemed worth the pain in upstream gnulib.  On the other hand, since we
do not assign copyright to a common holder, we don't follow quite the
same rules as the FSF demands of GNU projects, and we could probably get
away with disabling the sc_copyright_check altogether (we already
disable several other upstream syntax checkers that don't make sense in
our particular project; such as checks for correct texinfo source
idioms, where we don't use texinfo for our documentation).

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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