Re: [PATCH 00/10] treewide: switch to __nonnull_args() macro

[Dmitry Ilvokhin <d@ilvokhin.com>]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2026 at 01:44:59PM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> 
> 
> On 10/28/26 1:19 AM, Dmitry Ilvokhin wrote:
> > Commit 22302af28d3f ("cleanup: Annotate guard constructors with
> > nonnull") added the __nonnull_args() macro to wrap the raw compiler
> > attribute, keeping the attribute's quirks in one place rather than
> > open-coded at every call site.
> > 
> > This series replaces the remaining open-coded __attribute__((nonnull))
> > users with __nonnull_args() to standardize nonnull attribute usage
> > across the tree.
> > 
> > Each patch can be applied separately by the respective maintainers. The
> > only dependency is kernel-doc: the string and lib/list_sort patches need
> > patch 1 ("docs: xforms_lists: support __nonnull_args()") in the same
> > release, otherwise strends() and list_sort() drop out of the generated
> > documentation.
> > 
> > Latest Sparse release could not properly parse __nonnull_args() without
> > arguments. Fix was proposed [1] and merged, but until updated version of
> > Sparse will reach wide masses it might trip on __nonnull_args() without
> > arguments.
> > 
> > There are few more instances of __attribute__((nonnull)) usages left in
> > the tools subdirectory, they are perf related copied files and can
> > (should?) be updated separately after this patchset lands.
> > 
> > Build-tested allmodconfig with GCC 11.5.0 and clang 22.1.8.
> 
> What ARCH(es)?

Fair point, I should have mentioned that I run this on x86_64 and
aarch64.

> 
> Did you mean to use such an "old" version of GCC?

There is no grand plan behind that to be honest, I used it, because this
is a version of GCC that comes with CentOS Stream 9 on the box I tested
the change.

To be on the safe side, I checked patchset still builds on GCC 16.2.1 on
allmodconfig x86_64.