coccicheck: introduce 'pending' semantic patches

Teach `make coccicheck` to avoid patches named "*.pending.cocci" and
handle them separately in a new `make coccicheck-pending` instead.
This means that we can separate "critical" patches from "FYI" patches.
The former target can continue causing Travis to fail its static
analysis job, while the latter can let us keep an eye on ongoing
(pending) transitions without them causing too much fallout.

Document the intended use-cases around these two targets.
As the process around the pending patches is not yet fully explored,
leave that out.

Signed-off-by: SZEDER Gábor <szeder.dev@gmail.com>
Based-on-work-by: SZEDER Gábor <szeder.dev@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

2 files changed, 46 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index bbfbb4292d..6bc4654828 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -2740,9 +2740,12 @@ endif
 	then \
 		echo '    ' SPATCH result: $@; \
 	fi
-coccicheck: $(addsuffix .patch,$(wildcard contrib/coccinelle/*.cocci))
+coccicheck: $(addsuffix .patch,$(filter-out %.pending.cocci,$(wildcard contrib/coccinelle/*.cocci)))
 
-.PHONY: coccicheck
+# See contrib/coccinelle/README
+coccicheck-pending: $(addsuffix .patch,$(wildcard contrib/coccinelle/*.pending.cocci))
+
+.PHONY: coccicheck coccicheck-pending
 
 ### Installation rules
 
diff --git a/contrib/coccinelle/README b/contrib/coccinelle/README
index 9c2f8879c2..f0e80bd7f0 100644
--- a/contrib/coccinelle/README
+++ b/contrib/coccinelle/README
@@ -1,2 +1,43 @@
 This directory provides examples of Coccinelle (http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/)
 semantic patches that might be useful to developers.
+
+There are two types of semantic patches:
+
+ * Using the semantic transformation to check for bad patterns in the code;
+   The target 'make coccicheck' is designed to check for these patterns and
+   it is expected that any resulting patch indicates a regression.
+   The patches resulting from 'make coccicheck' are small and infrequent,
+   so once they are found, they can be sent to the mailing list as per usual.
+
+   Example for introducing new patterns:
+   67947c34ae (convert "hashcmp() != 0" to "!hasheq()", 2018-08-28)
+   b84c783882 (fsck: s/++i > 1/i++/, 2018-10-24)
+
+   Example of fixes using this approach:
+   248f66ed8e (run-command: use strbuf_addstr() for adding a string to
+               a strbuf, 2018-03-25)
+   f919ffebed (Use MOVE_ARRAY, 2018-01-22)
+
+   These types of semantic patches are usually part of testing, c.f.
+   0860a7641b (travis-ci: fail if Coccinelle static analysis found something
+               to transform, 2018-07-23)
+
+ * Using semantic transformations in large scale refactorings throughout
+   the code base.
+
+   When applying the semantic patch into a real patch, sending it to the
+   mailing list in the usual way, such a patch would be expected to have a
+   lot of textual and semantic conflicts as such large scale refactorings
+   change function signatures that are used widely in the code base.
+   A textual conflict would arise if surrounding code near any call of such
+   function changes. A semantic conflict arises when other patch series in
+   flight introduce calls to such functions.
+
+   So to aid these large scale refactorings, semantic patches can be used.
+   However we do not want to store them in the same place as the checks for
+   bad patterns, as then automated builds would fail.
+   That is why semantic patches 'contrib/coccinelle/*.pending.cocci'
+   are ignored for checks, and can be applied using 'make coccicheck-pending'.
+
+   This allows to expose plans of pending large scale refactorings without
+   impacting the bad pattern checks.