Re: [PATCH 4/4] asm-generic/bitsperlong.h: Add sanity checks for __BITS_PER_LONG

David Laight
2026-01-19T17:47:34Z

On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:57:49 +0100
"Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 19, 2026, at 14:41, Thomas Weißschuh wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 01:45:04PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> >> On Mon, Jan 19, 2026, at 11:56, Thomas Weißschuh wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 10:37:58AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Don't you need a check that it isn't wrong on a user system?
> >> >> Which is what I thought it was doing.
> >> >
> >> > Not really. The overrides defined by arch/*/include/uapi/asm/bitsperlong.h are
> >> > being tested here. If they work in the kernel build I assume they also work
> >> > in userspace.
> >>
> >> I think You could just move check into include/asm-generic/bitsperlong.h
> >> to make this more obvious with the #ifdef __KERNEL__, and remove the
> >> disabled check from my original version there.
> >
> > Ok. I'd like to keep your existing test though, as it tests something different
> > and it would be nice to have that too at some point.
>
> Sure, that works too. I wonder if one of the recent vdso cleanups
> also happened to address the problem with the incorrect BITS_PER_LONG
> being visible in the vdso code. Maybe we can already turn that on again.

There is vdso/bits.h, but everything actually includes linux/bits.h first.

I was wondering what happens if you are actually using the 'uapi' headers
to build programs (may nolibc ones).
On x86-64, 'gcc foo.c' might work, but 'gcc -m32 foo.c' will find exactly
the same headers and go badly wrong unless everything is based on
compiler defines.

An assert (of some kind) that checks the pre-processor BITS_PER_LONG
constant actually matches sizof (long) seems reasonable for all build.
The alternative is to (somehow) manage to avoid needing a pre-processor
constant at all, moving everything to 'integer constant expressions'
instead (good luck with that...).

I'm most of the way through a 'de-bloat' patchset for bits.h.
I'm sure there is a good reason why GENMASK(hi, lo) isn't defined
as '((type)2 << hi) - ((type)1 << lo)'.
Since that definition doesn't need the bit-width in any form.
(Just beat up any static checker that objects to '2 << hi' being zero.)
I've only made that change for ASM files - IIRC the assembler only
supports one size of signed integer.

David