Ubuntu Manpage: bls-standalone - build log scanner, standalone version

Provided by: bls-standalone_0.20151231build1_amd64

NAME

       bls-standalone - build log scanner, standalone version

SYNOPSIS

       bls-standalone --help

       bls-standalone  [  global  options  ]  check  [  --compiledrulesfile  rulesfile ] [ --blhc blhc-program ]
       logfiles

       bls-standalone [ global options ] compile [ compile-options ]

       bls-standalone [ global options ] checkout

DESCRIPTION

       bls-standalone is the command line utility to run the build log scanner on manually  specified  logfiles,
       including support to manage the needed compiled rules definitions.

GLOBAL OPTIONS

       Global options can be given before the command, available options are:

       Options  can  be specified before the command. Each affects a different subset of commands and is ignored
       by other commands.

       -v --verbose
              increase verbosity

       --libdir directory
              specify the directory where the scan and compile binaries are looked for

       --sharedir directory
              specify the directory where the copy of the rules files and the  packaged  precompiled  rule  data
              resides.

COMMANDS

bls-standalone has three commands: check, compile and checkout.

check [ --compiledrulesfile rulesfile ] [ --blhc blhc-program ] logfiles
This command runs the bls scanner and the blhc scanner on the given build log files. If no
compiled rules file is given with --compiledrulesfile then a previously compiled one is looked for
and if there is none than the one shipped together with the package is used. blhc is also called
if it is found or specified with the --blhcp option. To silence a warning about it not being found
set it to NO.

compile [ -o output-file ] [ --no-defaults] [ --ignorecheckout] additional rule descriptions
Compiles the checks into a compiled form.

Unless -o is given to determine a different place, it is stored in a cache directory (determined
by some environment variables) where the future check invocations will use it intsead of the
packaged precompiled rules.

Additional rule descriptions can be given as command line arguments.

Rules stored in proper places of your home directory are looked at, too. (To see where they are
looked for, use --verbose.)

Unless --no-defaults is given the contents of a previous checkout or the copy of the rules shipped
with the package are used, too.

If there are rules of the same name, those given as command line arguments override local and
original ones and local ones override original ones.

checkout
Check out the current rules used for the non-standalone build scanner into a directory where the
next compile run will use them instead of the shipped rules.

Currently this checks out parts of the QA svn repository. This URL might get outdated in the
future. If the bls-standalone version you use and the non-standlone bls version get out of sync,
those rules might contain things that your bls-stanalone cannot handle.

WRITING RULES

Some far too short guide to writing new description files:

The non-standalone build log scanner is only run for builds deemed successful. So checks for things that
should usually make a build fail makes often not much sense (a test-suite generating false positives is
often more likely than catching an error ignored inproperly).

The filename is the tag produced for the test. Finding a good name is often the hardest part about
writing new checks.

Most of the description file is actually the html code describing what the finding usually means to be
displayed on ⟨http://qa.debian.org/bls/⟩ with the exception of the lines starting with ## at the top of
the file.

The description should contain the following information:

What did the check found?
Make it easy for people to find what was matched. Makes it easier to find the issue, less likely to
disregard it as false-positive if it is not, and less time wasting if it actually is a false positive.

Why is what is found a problem?
Even the most serious flaws can easily be disregarded as minor issues due to ignorance. And some things
are only dangerous in some sitations and don't require the highest priority in other situations.
Distingushing both cases is hard and some more words in the description about it can help a lot.

What can be done against it?
Some hints how to avoid the problem both help the one due to fix it some time looking for a solution.
This is especially useful to help people fixing it properly instead of only hiding the problem more
thoroughly.

The actual ## directives at the start of the file are:

Merge:
This line tells that this check triggers if other checks appear at the same line.

There are currently only two forms supported:

##Merge: same tagname1 tagname2

and

##Merge: same tagname1 tagname2a or tagname2b

Match:
This is a regular expression describing what to match each line of the build log against to find the
issue, prefixed with regexp:. As an extension to the regular syntax there is a atom \/ which specifies
that once a line matches up to this part, no check that does not have a \/ at this place is supposed to
match this line. (This is an optimisation to heavily trim down the compile state machine, but it also
can be used to avoid false-positives).

As all regular expressions of all checks are compiled into a single finite state machine, checks that are
very specific at the start of the line are quite cheap while checks not specific at the start are often
quite expensive. The size of the state machine output by the compile command is a good measurement how
expensive the specific check is.

Since:
If there are new rules then the information at ⟨http://qa.debian.org/bls/⟩ might be outdated until all
logs are rescanned with the new version. For each log scanned by the non-standalone build log scanner
the version number of the used rules is remembered. The number specified with the Since field tells the
web report generated where to place warnings that information about this check might be outdated.

Extract:
This tells how to extract information from the matched file to be showed together with the matched line
(like a filename something was found in).

There are currently following forms supported here:

##Extract: simple 0 endcount 'endchar'
##Extract: simple 0 'reset' endcount 'endchar'
##Extract: simple startcount 'startchar' endcount 'endchar'
##Extract: simple startcount 'startchar' 'reset' endcount 'endchar'

Where startchar is a character to look for for the start of the extracted area (after the startcountth
occurrence). resetchar is a character to abort extraction. endchar is a character to look for for the
end of the extracted area (after the endcountth occurrence).

For example:
##Extract: simple 2 '|' '/' 1 '|' means to extract the content between the 2nd and 3rd pipe symbol,
unless there is a slash in between.

Action:
describes what to do if a switch is matched. This can be used to set variables referenced in other rules
to generate context-sensitive rules.

Condition:
add conditions (on variables set by ##Action). If the condition is not met, the generating of a finding
is supressed.

CEVEATS

       While  compiling  all  matches  into a single finite state machine produces very fast results, it is only
       feasible while the state machine does not grow too much.  So  care  has  to  be  taken  to  not  use  too
       expensive searches.

       Some checks (especially context specific ones) are quite unreliable.  The non-standalone build log checks
       do  not  include  some  findings for the summary unless they appear on multiple architectures, which bls-
       standalone obviously cannot do.

       bls is optimized to be fast.  Do not run it with rules files you do not trust.  (Only the content of  log
       files scanned is supposed to be untrusted data).

       blhc  is  quite  slow  which  is  luckily  not  that noticeable if not scanning the logfiles of the whole
       archive. If you test new rules on a larger set of logfiles, using --blhc=NO can speed things up  quite  a
       bit.

       blhc does not report line numbers so bls-standalone cannot report them for those findings.

       Note  that  checking  the  logs  of  a dpkg-buildpackage -b run and a dpkg-buildpackage -B run can make a
       difference (so if you cannot reproduce a E-binary-arch-produces-all make sure you check the correct  type
       of log).

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs or wishlist requests to the Debian BTS
       (e.g. by using reportbug bls-standalone under Debian)
       or directly to brlink@debian.org

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2013,2014,2015 Bernhard R. Link ⟨http://www.brlink.eu⟩
       This  is  free  software;  see  the  source  for  copying  conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for
       MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.