McIntyre: Scanning for assembly code in Free Software packages

the new bugs you get in an update are because some change has unforeseen consequences. this probably happens a lot because software is complex with many interdependent parts, some of them more fragile than you would expect.

so modifying any code is potentially dangerous, and needs to be tested. translating asm to C may introduce a subtle behaviour change. but if the change is in a corner case, its quite possible that it was doing the wrong thing in asm and no one ever noticed.

maybe the asm version is fast because it does not check for alignment, or that something is non-zero (maybe poor examples). maybe when the asm was written all the data was aligned, and x was never zero, but that assumption might not always be true.

so replacing a fragile bit of asm with a robust bit of C might be a very good thing. (not that all asm is fragile, or all c is robust. but i am sure the compiler and static analysis tools can give you much better warnings for the C).