Re: [PATCH] kbuild: Enable -fstrict-flex-arrays=3

Gustavo A. R. Silva
2023-05-17T23:44:15Z

On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 04:28:04PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> The -fstrict-flex-arrays=3 option is now available with the release
> of GCC 13[1] and Clang 16[2]. This feature instructs the compiler to
> treat only C99 flexible arrays as dynamically sized for the purposes of
> object size calculations. In other words, the ancient practice of using
> 1-element arrays, or the GNU extension of using 0-sized arrays, as a
> dynamically sized array is disabled. This allows CONFIG_UBSAN_BOUNDS,
> CONFIG_FORTIFY_SOURCE, and other object-size aware features to behave
> unambiguously in the face of trailing arrays: only C99 flexible arrays
> are considered to be dynamically sized.

It's happening! :'-)

>
> Enabling this will help track down any outstanding cases of fake
> flexible arrays that need attention in kernel code.
>
> [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/C-Dialect-Options.html#index-fstrict-flex-arrays
> [2] https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangCommandLineReference.html#cmdoption-clang-fstrict-flex-arrays
>
> Cc: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
> Cc: "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavoars@kernel.org>
> Cc: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
> Cc: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
> Cc: Nicolas Schier <nicolas@fjasle.eu>
> Cc: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org
> Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

Reviewed-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@kernel.org>

Thanks!
--
Gustavo

> ---
> Makefile | 6 ++++++
> 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
> index f836936fb4d8..07e5aec1daf5 100644
> --- a/Makefile
> +++ b/Makefile
> @@ -1026,6 +1026,12 @@ KBUILD_CFLAGS += -Wno-pointer-sign
> # globally built with -Wcast-function-type.
> KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option, -Wcast-function-type)
>
> +# To gain proper coverage for CONFIG_UBSAN_BOUNDS and CONFIG_FORTIFY_SOURCE,
> +# the kernel uses only C99 flexible arrays for dynamically sized trailing
> +# arrays. Enforce this for everything that may examine structure sizes and
> +# perform bounds checking.
> +KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option, -fstrict-flex-arrays=3)
> +
> # disable stringop warnings in gcc 8+
> KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-disable-warning, stringop-truncation)
>
> --
> 2.34.1
>