Re: [PATCH] mac80211: check endianness/types in sparse runs

Johannes Berg
2008-02-21T19:20:29Z

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1266 bytes --]

>> [patch doing CHECKFLAGS += -D__CHECK_ENDIAN__ in the
>> net/mac80211/Makefile]

> I would prefer it to be kernel wide enabled.
> Tried a defconfig build.

Hm. I tend to think there was a reason for this, since this is actually
explicitly disabled by include/linux/types.h:

#ifdef __CHECKER__
#define __bitwise__ __attribute__((bitwise))
#else
#define __bitwise__
#endif

#ifdef __CHECK_ENDIAN__
#define __bitwise __bitwise__
#else
#define __bitwise
#endif

The commit that introduced __CHECK_ENDIAN__ was
af4ca457eaf2d6682059c18463eb106e2ce58198 ("gfp_t: infrastructure") but
it doesn't say anything about the rationale for it.

> When I enabled __CHECK_ENDIAN I got:
> 8 files with > 100 warnings
> 14 files with 10 to 99 warnings.
>
> So nothing that should scare a kernel hacker...
>
> warnings without: 1686
> warnings with: 2788
>
> OK - thats a lot, but then fixing 8 files will significantly
> reduce this.

I recently ran sparse on my config and was surprised by the number of
warnings. Then again, something in mmzone.h or so generated billions of
them...

In any case, I would love to have __CHECK_ENDIAN__ enabled by default at
least on the wireless code (just caught another bug with it...)

johannes

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 828 bytes --]