A bit embarrassing, this mistake was introduced by me. I submitted a corresponding patch to fix it, but no one has reviewed it.
See link below:
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-03/msg06506.html
"Eric Blake" <eblake@redhat.com>wrote:
> On 04/03/2018 10:37 AM, no-reply@patchew.org wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > This series seems to have some coding style problems. See output below for
> > more information:
> >
>
> > === OUTPUT BEGIN ===
> > Checking PATCH 1/2: Implement .hex file loader...
> > ERROR: braces {} are necessary for all arms of this statement
> > #220: FILE: hw/core/loader.c:1463:
> > + } while (++hex_blob != end);
> > [...]
>
> False positive; this is a known bug in checkpatch.pl, and there is even
> a patch proposed to resolve it, but no one has incorporated the patch yet:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-03/msg05232.html
>
> --
> Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
> Red Hat, Inc. +1-919-301-3266
> Virtualization: qemu.org | libvirt.org
>