Re: [PATCH 15/17] KVM: retpolines: x86: eliminate retpoline from vmx.c exit handlers

Andrea Arcangeli
2019-09-24T00:38:26Z

Hi Paolo,

On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 02:15:39AM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Do you really need that? Why couldn't the handle_* functions simply be
> exported from nested.c to vmx.c?

I prefer the direct call too indeed.

If Sean doesn't want to export those generic names to the whole kernel
it would be enough to #include "nested.c" from vmx.c, and you'd still
have it private but with no additional checks and no additional extern
call. It's not like kvm-intel can be built without linking nested.o
anyway.

This overall is a C shortcoming of some sort if you've to resort to
#include "nested.c" to keep the function hidden in kvm-intel.o
despite it's implemented in two different object files. One should be
able to limit the scope of an extern function declaration per a group
of object files and to drop the declaration before linking that object
beyond that initial group.

Thanks,
Andrea