From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: new architectures, time_t __kernel_long_t Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:00:27 -0800 Message-ID: <50D3ECEB.1070401@zytor.com> References: <201211141218.02105.arnd@arndb.de> <20121221045731.GO4939@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:60438 "EHLO mail.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750710Ab2LUFAm (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:42 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20121221045731.GO4939@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> Sender: linux-arch-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: Al Viro Cc: Arnd Bergmann , linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, Vineet.Gupta1@synopsys.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, James Hogan On 12/20/2012 08:57 PM, Al Viro wrote: > On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:18:01PM +0000, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > >> The other types that are used as 64 bit on x32 are ino_t, nlink_t, >> size_t, ssize_t, ptrdiff_t, and off_t. > > *Kernel-side* we should not give a damn about the userland nlink_t, period. > Making it architecture-dependent had been a bad mistake that essentially > made nlink_t useless for the kernel. That mistake had been fixed; please, > do not bring it back. If some userland structure needs to include a field > encoding nlink_t values, please use an explicitly-sized type when refering > to it kernel-side. > We should never use userland types per se. We can use __kernel_*_t typedefs to make the kernel headers neater if it makes sense, but that is often not even necessary. > The same should've been true for mode_t, but for historical reasons we > are using umode_t for just about everything and IMO we should kill the > last references to mode_t anywhere kernel-side (again, explicitly-sized > types for userland st_mode and friends on the last few architectures > still refering to mode_t there) and just rename umode_t to mode_t; I'm > sick and tired of playing whack-a-mole with code using (arch-dependent) > mode_t for kernel data. And no, it's not always harmless - we had rather > ugly bugs based on that. >