trivial patches: Should we care about control reaches end of non-void function

Steve Kemp
2008-10-15T18:39:14Z

During my build processes I see a lot of messages like this:

In function xxx:
xxx.c:123: control reaches end of non-void function

These are typically caused by constructs like:

static int some_function()
{
switch (blah) {
...

default:
BUG();
}
}

I see some functions in the kernel have added "return 0" after the
BUG, presumably to silence these warnings. Would a patch to do this
consistently, or is that too trivial even for trivial patches?

Actual example:
./mm/mempolicy.c
policy_zonelist - gives this warning.
slab_node - gives this warning
__mpol_equal - has the warning silenced via explicit return.