Re: [PATCH 8/10] bug.h: Make BUILD_BUG_ON generate compile-time error

Daniel Santos
2012-09-29T00:51:52Z

On 09/28/2012 07:32 PM, Josh Triplett wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 06:20:09PM -0500, Daniel Santos wrote:
>> Negative sized arrays wont create a compile-time error in some cases
>> starting with gcc 4.4 (e.g., inlined functions), but gcc 4.3 introduced
>> the error function attribute that will. This patch modifies
>> BUILD_BUG_ON to behave like BUILD_BUG already does, using the error
>> function attribute so that you don't have to build the entire kernel to
>> discover that you have a problem, and then enjoy trying to track it down
>> from a link-time error.
> Rather than doing both, and potentially producing two errors for the
> same issue, how about using __compiletime_error only, and only using the
> negative-sized array when __compiletime_error has no useful definition?
>
> For instance, in compiler.h, when defining __compiletime_error as an
> empty macro in the fallback case, you could define a
> __compiletime_error_fallback() macro that declares a negative-sized
> array; you could then define __compiletime_error_fallback() as an empty
> macro when it doesn't exist.
Oh, that's a great idea. That will keep more of the compiler's details
in compiler*.h.

Daniel