Bug 205891

There are a lot of people doing crazy things, but probably very few who are crazy enough to spell check the huge Linux kernel.

The bad news: The analysis report lists 11310 bugs in the Linux kernel code.

The good news: That's all just spelling errors or typos and very probably they don't have any effects on the great functionality of the Linux kernel.

So I am probably the person who reported the most but also the least important Linux kernel bugs ;-)

More specifically: The FOSS server fossies.org offers a new feature "Source code misspelling reports":

 https://fossies.org/features.html#codespell

Such reports are normally only generated on request, but for testing purposes I have as Fossies administrator already done some "codespell" checks for selected popular FOSS projects. Since the feedback was generally positive I have now taken courage to create an analysis for the probably largest FOSS project, the current mainline Linux kernel 5.5-rc2:

 https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/codespell.html

That version-independent URL should redirect always to the last report (if available), so currently to

 https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/v5.5/linux-5.5-rc2.tar.gz/codespell.html

Although some obviously wrong matches ("false positives") are already filtered (ignored) please inform me if you find more of them so that I can force a new improved check if applicable.

And yes, some spelling suggestions are worth discussing, some obvious spelling errors may be desired (for e.g. in variable names) and others are contained in third-party code.

Just for information there are also three supplemental pages

 https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/codespell_conf.html

showing some used "codespell" configurations,

 https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/codespell_fps.html

showing all resulting obvious "false positives" and

 https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/codespell_hist.html

just offering as a motivating gimmick a graph mainly displaying the Fossies spelling error score points for diverse current Linux kernels (in the hope to present improved results in future reports).

And last but not least I (but as Kernel- and C-layman) want to point to three spelling errors that are found within the code itself:

1) Line 63: falg -> flag
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm/mach-omap2/omap-secure.h#L63
https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/v5.5/linux-5.5-rc1.tar.gz/linux-5.5-rc1/arch/arm/mach-omap2/omap-secure.h?M=63#l_58

and related (?) line 35
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm/mach-omap2/omap-smc.S#L35
https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/v5.5/linux-5.5-rc1.tar.gz/linux-5.5-rc1/arch/arm/mach-omap2/omap-smc.S?M=35#l_33

2) Line 55 and 60: lable -> label
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm/boot/dts/aspeed-bmc-opp-lanyang.dts#L55
https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/v5.5/linux-5.5-rc1.tar.gz/linux-5.5-rc1/arch/arm/boot/dts/aspeed-bmc-opp-lanyang.dts?M=55,60#l_31

3) Line 119: tyep -> type
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/rtl8723ae/hal_bt_coexist.h#L119
https://fossies.org/linux/kernel/v5.5/linux-5.5-rc1.tar.gz/linux-5.5-rc1/drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/rtl8723ae/hal_bt_coexist.h?M=119#l_119

I know to correct all spelling errors is a Sisyphean task and nearly impossible and many development teams are involved but eliminating the nasty ones and/or improving the Fossies internal ranking from currently "C" to "C+" or even "B" would be a great success.

Regards

Jens