Re: [PATCH] v4l: vsp1: Fix function declaration/definition mismatch

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

Hi Eugeniu,

On Monday, 4 December 2017 20:10:34 EET Eugeniu Rosca wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 12:52:17PM +0200, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > On Friday, 24 November 2017 20:40:57 EET Kieran Bingham wrote:
> >> Hi Eugeniu,
> >> 
> >> Thankyou for the patch,
> >> 
> >> Laurent - Any comments on this? Otherwise I'll bundle this in with my
> >> suspend/resume patch for a pull request.
> >> 
> >> <CUT>
> >> 
> >> I was going to say: We know the object is an entity by it's type. Isn't
> >> hgo more descriptive for it's name ?
> >> 
> >> However to answer my own question - The implementation function goes on
> >> to define a struct vsp1_hgo *hgo, so no ... the Entity object shouldn't
> >> be hgo.
> > 
> > And that's exactly why there's a difference between the declaration and
> > implementation :-) Naming the parameter hgo in the declaration makes it
> > clear to the reader what entity is expected. The parameter is then named
> > entity in the function definition to allow for the vsp1_hgo *hgo local
> > variable.
> > 
> > Is the mismatch a real issue ? I don't think the kernel coding style
> > mandates parameter names to be identical between function declaration and
> > definition.
> 
> You are the DRM/VSP1 and kernel experts, so feel free to drop the patch.
> Still IMO what makes kernel coding style sweet is its simplicity [1].
> Here is some statistics computed with exuberant ctags and cpccheck.
> 
> $ git describe HEAD
> v4.15-rc2
> 
> $ ctags --version
> Exuberant Ctags 5.9~svn20110310, Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Darren Hiebert
>   Addresses: <dhiebert@users.sourceforge.net>,
>   http://ctags.sourceforge.net
>     Optional compiled features: +wildcards, +regex
> 
> # Number of function definitions in drivers/media:
> $ find drivers/media -type d | \
>   xargs -I {} sh -c "ctags -x --c-types=f {}/*" | wc -l
> 24913
> 
> # Number of func declaration/definition mismatches found by cppcheck:
> $ cppcheck --force --enable=all --inconclusive  drivers/media/ 2>&1 | \
>   grep declaration | wc -l
> 168
> 
> It looks like only (168/24913) * 100% = 0,67% of all drivers/media
> functions have a mismatch between function declaration and function
> definition. Why making this number worse?

Of course the goal is not to introduce a mismatch for the sake of it. It makes 
sense for the declaration and definition to match in most cases. My point is 
that in this particular case I believe the mismatch makes the code more 
readable.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart