linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 4/8] waitid(2): leave copyout of siginfo to syscall itself

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Date:   Mon, 15 May 2017 16:06:49 -0700
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Cc:     Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/8] waitid(2): leave copyout of siginfo to syscall itself

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 3:37 PM, Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>
> +struct waitid_info {
> +       pid_t pid;
> +       uid_t uid;
> +       int status;
> +       int why;
> +};

Ugh. Could we please just name those with what they are actually used for?

Even if you hate the "si_" previx for some reason, I really don't see
why we'd continue call it "why", when it's written to "si_code"

Yes, yes, I see the historical reason, and how "si_code" is just the
low 16 bits of "why", and the high 16 bits is something else.

But now that there is a structure for that, could we not just make
that explicit in the structure instead? Those games with "why" look
really odd.

So I can see why you'd like to keep this patch as "minimal
conversion", but it would be really nice to have a followup patch that
gets rid of the odd "why" games.

             Linus