Re: [PATCH v2] kbuild: treat char as always unsigned

Guenter Roeck
2022-12-21T14:53:53Z

On Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 02:30:34PM -0600, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> Recently, some compile-time checking I added to the clamp_t family of
> functions triggered a build error when a poorly written driver was
> compiled on ARM, because the driver assumed that the naked `char` type
> is signed, but ARM treats it as unsigned, and the C standard says it's
> architecture-dependent.
>
> I doubt this particular driver is the only instance in which
> unsuspecting authors make assumptions about `char` with no `signed` or
> `unsigned` specifier. We were lucky enough this time that that driver
> used `clamp_t(char, negative_value, positive_value)`, so the new
> checking code found it, and I've sent a patch to fix it, but there are
> likely other places lurking that won't be so easily unearthed.
>
> So let's just eliminate this particular variety of heisensign bugs
> entirely. Set `-funsigned-char` globally, so that gcc makes the type
> unsigned on all architectures.
>
> This will break things in some places and fix things in others, so this
> will likely cause a bit of churn while reconciling the type misuse.
>

There is an interesting fallout: When running the m68k:q800 qemu emulation,
there are lots of warning backtraces.

WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 23 at crypto/testmgr.c:5724 alg_test.part.0+0x7c/0x326
testmgr: alg_test_descs entries in wrong order: 'adiantum(xchacha12,aes)' before 'adiantum(xchacha20,aes)'
------------[ cut here ]------------
WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 23 at crypto/testmgr.c:5724 alg_test.part.0+0x7c/0x326
testmgr: alg_test_descs entries in wrong order: 'adiantum(xchacha20,aes)' before 'aegis128'

and so on for pretty much every entry in the alg_test_descs[] array.

Bisect points to this patch, and reverting it fixes the problem.

It looks like the problem is that arch/m68k/include/asm/string.h
uses "char res" to store the result of strcmp(), and char is now
unsigned - meaning strcmp() will now never return a value < 0.
Effectively that means that strcmp() is broken on m68k if
CONFIG_COLDFIRE=n.

The fix is probably quite simple.

diff --git a/arch/m68k/include/asm/string.h b/arch/m68k/include/asm/string.h
index f759d944c449..b8f4ae19e8f6 100644
--- a/arch/m68k/include/asm/string.h
+++ b/arch/m68k/include/asm/string.h
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ static inline char *strncpy(char *dest, const char *src, size_t n)
#define __HAVE_ARCH_STRCMP
static inline int strcmp(const char *cs, const char *ct)
{
- char res;
+ signed char res;

asm ("\n"
"1: move.b (%0)+,%2\n" /* get *cs */

Does that make sense ? If so I can send a patch.

Guenter