[dpdk-dev] false positive in check-symbol-change.sh tool

[Thomas Monjalon]

Hi Neil,

I think I've discovered a false positive with the script
devtools/check-symbol-change.sh
When checking the patch http://patches.dpdk.org/patch/40601/,
which is adding an experimental section with a symbol in it,
we can see this message:
ERROR: symbol rte_frag_table_del_expired_entries is added in a section other than the EXPERIMENTAL section of the version map

The code raising this error is below:
            if [ "$secname" != "EXPERIMENTAL" ]
            then
                # Symbols that are getting added in a section
                # other than the experimental section
                # to be moving from an already supported
                # section or its a violation
                grep -q \
                "$mname $symname [^EXPERIMENTAL] del" "$mapdb"
                if [ $? -ne 0 ]
                then
                    echo -n "ERROR: symbol $symname "
                    echo -n "is added in a section "
                    echo -n "other than the EXPERIMENTAL "
                    echo "section of the version map"
                    ret=1
                fi
            fi

After a quick check, I see two strange things:

1/ $secname is "+EXPERIMENTAL" in this case
This is probably the root cause of this false positive.

2/ The grep pattern is probably not what you want.
The regex [^EXPERIMENTAL] means "a character which is none
of the letters in EXPERIMENTAL".

Hope it can help you (or others) to fix some issues.
Thanks