Re: [PATCH v11 3/4] add FPGA manager core

[Pavel Machek <pavel@denx.de>]

Hi!

> > Of course, the maintainer gets the last word regardless of what anyone
> > else thinks.
> > 
> > Generally, minimal code is better.  Trying to future proof code is a
> > waste of time because you can't predict what will happen in the future.
> > It's way more likely that some pointer you never expected to be NULL
> > will be NULL instead of the few checked at the beginning of a function.
> > Adding useless code uses RAM and makes the function slower.  It's a bit
> > confusing for users as well because they will wonder when the NULL check
> > is used.  A lot of times this sort of error handling is a bit fake and
> > what I mean is that it looks correct but the system will just crash in a
> > later function.
> > 
> > Also especially with a simple NULL dereferences like this theoretical
> > one, it's better to just get the oops.  It kills the module but you get
> > a good message in the log and it's normally straight forward to debug.
> > 
> > We spent a surprising amount of time discussing useless code.  I made
> > someone redo a patch yesterday because they had incomplete error
> > handling for a situation which could never happen.
> 
> Thanks for the discussion.
> 
> Interesting.  The amount of code bloat here compiles down to about two
> machine instructions (in two places).  Actually a little more since I should
> be using IS_ERR_OR_NULL.  But the main question is whether I should do
> it at all.
> 
> The behaviour I should drive here is that the user will do their own error
> checking.  After they get a pointer to a FPGA manager using
> of_fpga_mgr_get(), they should check it and not assume that
> fpga_mgr_firmware_load() will do it for them, i.e.
> 
> 	mgr = of_fpga_mgr_get(mgr_node);
> 	if (IS_ERR(mgr))
> 		return PTR_ERR(mgr);
> 	fpga_mgr_firmware_load(mgr, flags, path);
> 
> I could take out these NULL pointer checks and it won't hurt anything unless
> someone is just using the functions badly, in which case: kablooey.

2 instructions is not that bad, do whatever is easier for you. These
patches received enough bikeshed painting.

Best regards,
								Pavel

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