Re: [PATCH 1/3] sysfs: Fix is_visible() support for binary attributes

[Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>]

Hi Emilio,

On 09/08/2015 05:51 PM, Emilio López wrote:
> Hi Greg & Guenter,
>
[ ... ]
>>>>
>>>> Unless I am missing something, this is not explained anywhere, but it is
>>>> not entirely trivial to understand. I think it should be documented.
>
> I agree. I couldn't find any mention of what this int was supposed to be by looking at Documentation/ (is_visible is not even mentioned :/) or include/linux/sysfs.h. Once we settle on something I'll document it before sending a v2.
>
In the include file ? No strong preference, though.

> By the way, I wrote a quick coccinelle script to match is_visible() users which reference the index (included below), and it found references to drivers which do not seem to use any binary attributes, so I believe changing the index meaning shouldn't be an issue.
>
Good.

>>> I agree, make i the number of the bin attribute and that should solve
>>> this issue.
>>>
>> No, that would conflict with the "normal" use of is_visible for non-binary
>> attributes, and make the index all but useless, since the is_visible function
>> would have to search through all the attributes anyway to figure out which one
>> is being checked.
>
> Yeah, using the same indexes would be somewhat pointless, although not many seem to be using it anyway (only 14 files matched). Others seem to be comparing the attr* instead. An alternative would be to use negative indexes for binary attributes and positive indexes for normal attributes.
>
... and I probably wrote or reviewed a significant percentage of those ;-).

Using negative numbers for binary attributes is an interesting idea.
Kind of unusual, though. Greg, any thoughts on that ?

Guenter