Re: [PATCH net-next 3/8] lib: packing: add pack_fields() and unpack_fields()

[Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@intel.com>]

On 10/19/2024 5:20 AM, Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 02:50:52PM -0700, Jacob Keller wrote:
>> Przemek, Vladimir,
>>
>> What are your thoughts on the next steps here. Do we need to go back to
>> the drawing board for how to handle these static checks?
>>
>> Do we try to reduce the size somewhat, or try to come up with a
>> completely different approach to handling this? Do we revert back to
>> run-time checks? Investigate some alternative for static checking that
>> doesn't have this limitation requiring thousands of lines of macro?
>>
>> I'd like to figure out what to do next.
> 
> Please see the attached patch for an idea on how to reduce the size
> of <include/generated/packing-checks.h>, in a way that should be
> satisfactory for both ice and sja1105, as well as future users.

This trades off generating the macros for an increase in the config
complexity. I suppose that is slightly better than generating thousands
of lines of macro... The unused macros sit on disk in the include file,
but i don't think they would impact the deployed code...

I'm still wondering if there is a different approach we can take to
validate these structures.