[PATCH RFC 2/2] checkpatch: warn on usage of VM_BUG_ON() and friends

David Hildenbrand
2022-08-24T16:33:34Z

checkpatch does not point out that VM_BUG_ON() and friends should be
avoided, however, Linus notes:

VM_BUG_ON() has the exact same semantics as BUG_ON. It is literally
no different, the only difference is "we can make the code smaller
because these are less important". [1]

So let's warn on VM_BUG_ON() and friends as well. While at it, make it
clearer that the kernel really shouldn't be crashed.

Note that there are some other *_BUG_ON flavors, but they are not all
bad: for example, KVM_BUG_ON() only triggers a WARN_ON_ONCE and then
flags KVM as being buggy, so we'll not care about them for now here.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/r/CAHk-=wg40EAZofO16Eviaj7mfqDhZ2gVEbvfsMf6gYzspRjYvw@mail.gmail.com

Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
---
scripts/checkpatch.pl | 6 +++---
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
index 79e759aac543..4c18acf17032 100755
--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -4695,12 +4695,12 @@ sub process {
}
}

-# avoid BUG() or BUG_ON()
- if ($line =~ /\b(?:BUG|BUG_ON)\b/) {
+# do not use BUG(), BUG_ON(), VM_BUG_ON() and friends.
+ if ($line =~ /\b(?:BUG|BUG_ON|VM_BUG_ON|VM_BUG_ON_[A-Z]+)\b/) {
my $msg_level = \&WARN;
$msg_level = \&CHK if ($file);
&{$msg_level}("AVOID_BUG",
- "Avoid crashing the kernel - try using WARN_ON & recovery code rather than BUG() or BUG_ON()\n" . $herecurr);
+ "Do not crash the kernel unless it is unavoidable - use WARN_ON_ONCE & recovery code (if reasonable) rather than BUG(), BUG_ON(), VM_BUG_ON(), ...\n" . $herecurr);
}

# avoid LINUX_VERSION_CODE
--
2.37.1