Re: [PATCH, RFC] byteorder: sanity check toolchain vs kernel endianess

Dmitry Vyukov
2019-05-10T10:53:33Z

From: Nick Kossifidis <mick@ics.forth.gr>
Date: Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 6:08 PM
To: Arnd Bergmann
Cc: Christoph Hellwig, Linus Torvalds, Andrew Morton, linux-arch,
<mick@ics.forth.gr>, Linux Kernel Mailing List

> Στις 2019-04-12 17:53, Arnd Bergmann έγραψε:
> > On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 4:36 PM Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> When removing some dead big endian checks in the RISC-V code Nick
> >> suggested that we should have some generic sanity checks. I don't
> >> think
> >> we should have thos inside the RISC-V code, but maybe it might make
> >> sense to have these in the generic byteorder headers. Note that these
> >> are UAPI headers and some compilers might not actually define
> >> __BYTE_ORDER__, so we first check that it actually exists.
> >>
> >> Suggested-by: Nick Kossifidis <mick@ics.forth.gr>
> >> Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
> >
> > Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> >
> > Extra checking like this is good in general, but I'm not sure I see
> > exactly what kind of issue one might expect to prevent with this:
> >
> > All architecture asm/byteorder.h headers either include the only
> > possible option, or they check the compiler defined macros:
> >
> > arch/arc/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __BIG_ENDIAN__
> > arch/arm/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __ARMEB__
> > arch/arm64/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __AARCH64EB__
> > arch/c6x/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef _BIG_ENDIAN
> > arch/microblaze/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __MICROBLAZEEL__
> > arch/mips/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#if defined(__MIPSEB__)
> > arch/nds32/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __NDS32_EB__
> > arch/powerpc/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __LITTLE_ENDIAN__
> > arch/sh/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __LITTLE_ENDIAN__
> > arch/xtensa/include/uapi/asm/byteorder.h:#ifdef __XTENSA_EL__
> >
> > Are you worried about toolchains that define those differently
> > from what these headers expect? Did you encounter such a case?
> >
> > Arnd
>
> The following architectures just include the header file without
> checking for any compiler macro:
>
> alpha: little_endian.h
> csky: little_endian.h
> h8300: big_endian.h
> hexagon: little_endian.h
> ia64: little_endian.h
> m68k: big_endian.h
> nios2: little_endian.h
> openrisc: big_endian.h
> parisc: big_endian.h
> riscv: little_endian.h
> s390: big_endian.h
> sparc: big_endian.h
> unicore32: little_endian.h
> x86: little_endian.h
>
> Of those who do check for a compiler macro, they don't use the
> generic macros (__ORDER_*_ENDIAN__) but arch-specific ones.
>
> Only two architectures (mips and xtensa) that support both big
> and little endian return an error in case the endianess can't be
> determined, the rest will move on without including any
> of *_endian.h files.
>
> I think it's good to have a sanity check in-place for consistency.

Hi,

This broke our cross-builds from x86. I am using:

$ powerpc64le-linux-gnu-gcc --version
powerpc64le-linux-gnu-gcc (Debian 7.2.0-7) 7.2.0

and it says that it's little-endian somehow:

$ powerpc64le-linux-gnu-gcc -dM -E - < /dev/null | grep BYTE_ORDER
#define __BYTE_ORDER__ __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__

Is it broke compiler? Or I always hold it wrong? Is there some
additional flag I need to add?

Thanks