The fix in 8f1751a111 made me wonder if we could automatically detect
when pointers are accessed but when this might not be safe. Systemd
is already using a lot of `assert(dst)` and this change now forces
us to use them.
So this commit (ab)uses coccinelle to flag any pointer parameter
dereference not preceded by assert(param), ASSERT_PTR(param), or an
explicit NULL check. It adds integration into meson as a new "coccinelle"
test suite (just like clang-tidy) and is run in CI. The check is not
perfect but seems a reasonable heuristic.
For this RFC commit it is scoped to a subset, it excludes 25 dirs right
now and includes around 100. About 300 warnings left. Busywork that I am
happy to do if there is agreement that it is worth it.
With this in place we would have caught the bug from 8f1751a111 in CI:
```
FAIL: check-pointer-deref.cocci found issues in systemd/src/boot:
diff -u -p systemd/src/boot/measure.c /tmp/nothing/measure.c
--- systemd/src/boot/measure.c
+++ /tmp/nothing/measure.c
@@ -312,7 +312,6 @@ EFI_STATUS tpm_log_tagged_event(
if (err != EFI_SUCCESS)
return err;
- *ret_measured = true;
return EFI_SUCCESS;
}
```
This also adds a new POINTER_MAY_BE_NULL() for the cases when the
called function will do the NULL check (like `iovec_is_set()`).
Previously, we looked for scripts in the tools/ directory ad hoc,
wherever they were needed. Let's do those checks in one place.
The main meson.build file is shrunk somewhat, which is always nice.
Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
Michael Vogt
Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek