Re: [PATCH v2] x86: Ensure input to pfn_to_kaddr() is treated as a 64-bit type

Michael Roth
2023-11-15T22:42:59Z

On Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 12:48:58PM -0800, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 11/15/23 12:14, Michael Roth wrote:
> > While it might be argued that the issue is on the caller side, other
> > archs/macros have taken similar approaches to deal with instances like
> > this, such as commit e48866647b48 ("ARM: 8396/1: use phys_addr_t in
> > pfn_to_kaddr()").
>
> Gah, I really hope nobody is arguing that for real, or is even thinking
> about this as a valid argument.

Not that I'm aware, but I did have my own doubts initially, which is
why I thought it warranted a note in the commit just in case it came up
from someone else.

>
> The helper should, well, help the caller. It makes zero sense to me
> that every single call site would need to know if the argument's type
> was big enough to hold the _return_ value. This nonsense can only even
> happen with macros. Type promotion would just do the right thing for
> any sanely declared actual helper function.

My thought was that it is easier to expect developers to know the pitfalls
of bit-field types, since it is universally applicable to all C code,
whereas expecting developers to anticipate such issues when writing similar
macros is potentially harder to enforce/audit and could lead to similar
issues popping up as things are refactored over time and new macros get
added that don't take such usages into account.

But neither argument seems to hold up in reality. Experienced developers
obviously do fall victim to the subtleties of of bit-field types, and
kernel devs obviously do tend to address these instances in more robust
ways based on the various pfn-related macros I looked through.

-Mike