Re: [PATCH 4/4] asm-generic/bitsperlong.h: Add sanity checks for __BITS_PER_LONG

H. Peter Anvin
2026-01-20T12:01:47Z

On January 20, 2026 2:03:31 AM PST, David Laight <david.laight.linux@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:39:53 +0100
>"Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 19, 2026, at 22:12, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> > On 2026-01-19 07:39, Thomas Weißschuh wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Do we actually support any compilers which *don't* define __SIZEOF_LONG__?
>> >>
>> >> When building the kernel not. I used this pattern because it is used
>> >> further up in the file. There it makes sense as it is actually a userspace
>> >> header which needs to support all kinds of compilers.
>> >> But this new check is gated behind __KERNEL__ anyways...
>> >> For the next revision I will move it into the regular kernel-internal
>> >> bitsperlong.h. That will be less confusing and still handle the vDSO build,
>> >> due to the way our header hierarchy works.
>> >>
>> >
>> > The point is that we can simply do:
>> >
>> > #define __BITS_PER_LONG (__SIZEOF_LONG__ << 3)
>> >
>> > ... and it will always be consistent.
>>
>> We have discussed this before, but decided it was too early to
>> assume that userspace compilers are recent enough for that.
>> According to godbolt.org, gcc-4.1 lacks __SIZEOF_LONG__ while
>> gcc-4.4 has it, as do all versions of clang. Not sure what other
>> compilers one may encounter using Linux kernel headers.
>
>For instance MSVC doesn't define __SIZEOF_LONG__ or __x86_64__.
>Unlikely to be used, but...
>
>So you can use __SIZEOF_LONG__ if it is defined, if not hunt for
>something else (possible just fixed in the installed headers).
>But in the latter case (at least) a compile-time check that the
>value is correct makes sense.
>And that can be done portably - probable with a negative array size.
>
> David
>
>>
>> Arnd
>>
>
>

If it doesn't define __x86_64__ it isn't API compliant at all, so it doesn't make any sense to talk about it.

The most portable way to do it in standard C is to use <limits.h>, but that of course has the header pollution problem.