Re: [PATCH 2/3] x86: Pass in pt_regs pointer for syscalls that need it

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:41 AM, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> wrote:
> > Hello, Brian.
> >
> > Brian Gerst wrote:
> >> Some syscalls need to access the pt_regs structure, either to copy
> >> user register state or to modifiy it.  This patch adds stubs to load
> >> the address of the pt_regs struct into the %eax register, and changes
> >> the syscalls to regparm(1) to receive the pt_regs pointer as the
> >> first argument.
> >
> > Heh... neat.  Just one question.
> >
> >> -asmlinkage long sys_iopl(unsigned long regsp)
> >> +ptregscall long sys_iopl(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned int level)
> >>  {
> >> -     struct pt_regs *regs = (struct pt_regs *)&regsp;
> >> -     unsigned int level = regs->bx;
> >
> > Here and at other places where the function takes more than one
> > arguments, wouldn't it be better to just take *regs and use other
> > parameters from regs?  That way we won't have to worry about gcc
> > corrupting register frame at all and I think it's cleaner that way.
> 
> Expanding the parameters is good documentation.  [...]

Well, that way we shuffle the parameter expansion into assembly code,
instead of creating it as a local variable in the C function.

The latter sure looks better documented, and less error-prone as
well, right? The compiler might also be able to optimize it some.
(and we save one instruction in any case)

	Ingo