Re: [PATCH v1 3/4] platform/x86: i2c-multi-instantiate: Make number of clients unsigned

[Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>]

On Mon, Nov 09, 2020 at 12:39:45PM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> On 11/5/20 12:05 PM, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > There is no need to use signed type for number of clients. Moreover,
> > it's cleaner to show that we never go negative there.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
> 
> I'm not a big fan of this change, it feels like needless churn to me.

Feel free to not apply it. I think I don't need to resend w/o it (IIRC the rest
pretty much independent of this change). But if you need a v2, tell me.

> Integers are signed by default and just because a value cannot become
> negative is not really a reason to make it unsigned. E.g. your typical
> "int i" is often used as an array index so it cannot go negative, still
> it almost always is an "int i" not an "unsigned int i".
> 
> IMHO good reasons for deviating from the default signedness and
> making a value unsigned are:
> 
> 1. Because the value cannot go negative and we need more range.
> 2. To avoid sign-extension when upcasting it to a larger integer type.
> 
> Neither is the case here.

I consider one more, i.e. if we know that value may not be negative the
unsigned type gives a hint. I always stumbled over signed integers used for
loop counters since they confuse me (Q in mind: "should I read code carefully
and check if it may or may not be signed? Why it's signed?").

That's why I like the idea of be a bit stricter about types.

Hope this explains my motivation.

> I do like the other 3 patches, thank you for those. I'm going to wait
> a bit with applying them though, to see where things go with the
> "[RFC 0/4] platform/x86: i2c-multi-instantiate: Pass ACPI fwnode to instantiated i2c-clients"
> 
> Merging them now may get in the way with merging that series if
> Wolfram wants to pick up the entire series (since it also involves
> an i2c-core change).

Usually I expect that RFC has less priority than normal series and I wouldn't
expect any maintainer (with some rare exceptions) to take series marked as RFC.
And TBH I was wondering why you marked them as such, to me that was fine to
send as normal one.

Thanks for the review!

-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko