Re: [PATCH v3] Many pages: Document fixed-width types with ISO C naming

Alejandro Colomar
2022-08-25T07:44:53Z

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Hi Greg,

On 8/25/22 07:57, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 01:36:10AM +0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>> But from your side what do we have? Just direct NAKs without much
>> explanation. The only one who gave some explanation was Greg, and he
>> vaguely pointed to Linus's comments about it in the past, with no precise
>> pointer to it. I investigated a lot before v2, and could not find anything
>> strong enough to recommend using kernel types in user space, so I pushed v2,
>> and the discussion was kept.
>
> So despite me saying that "this is not ok", and many other maintainers
> saying "this is not ok", you applied a patch with our objections on it?
> That is very odd and a bit rude.
>
>> I would like that if you still oppose to the patch, at least were able to
>> provide some facts to this discussion.
>
> The fact is that the kernel can not use the namespace that userspace has
> with ISO C names. It's that simple as the ISO standard does NOT
> describe the variable types for an ABI that can cross the user/kernel
> boundry.

I understand that. But user-space programs are allowed to use the
standard types when calling a syscall that really uses kernel types.

IMHO, it should be irrelevant for the user how the kernel decides to
call a 64-bit unsigned integer, right?

Or do you mean that some of the pages I modified

>
> Work with the ISO C standard if you wish to document such type usage,
> and get it approved and then we would be willing to consider such a
> change. But until then, we have to stick to our variable name types,
> just like all other operating systems have to (we are not alone here.)
>
> Please revert your change.

Thanks for asking nicely.

Since there's ongoing discussion, and I don't want to make it look like
ignoring it, I've reverted the patch for now. If I apply it again, I
hope that it will be with some more consensus, as I've always tried to
do. Sorry if I was a bit irascible yesterday. Shit happens.

TL;DR: Patch reverted; asking nicely works. =)

>
> greg k-h

Cheers,

Alex

--
Alejandro Colomar
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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