linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] linux/types.h: Restore the ability to disable sparse endianness checks

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Message-ID: <1507311801.2602.12.camel@wdc.com>
Date:   Fri, 6 Oct 2017 17:43:22 +0000
From:   Bart Van Assche <Bart.VanAssche@....com>
To:     "hch@....de" <hch@....de>
CC:     "torvalds@...ux-foundation.org" <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "mst@...hat.com" <mst@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] linux/types.h: Restore the ability to disable sparse
 endianness checks

On Fri, 2017-10-06 at 19:35 +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 10:23:53AM -0700, Bart Van Assche wrote:
> > The purpose of patch "linux/types.h: enable endian checks for all
> > sparse builds" was to encourage driver authors to annotate
> > endianness correctly in their drivers. However, since that patch
> > went upstream no endianness annotations in drivers have been fixed.
> > I think that this shows that the followed approach does not work,
> > probably because several driver authors do not use sparse. Restore
> > the ability to disable sparse endianness checks such that it
> > becomes again easy to review other sparse diagnostics for people
> > who want to analyze drivers they are not the author of.
> 
> So how do we get people to do it?  Out of the sparse checks endianess
> warnings are the most useful, together with __user and __iomem.

Hello Christoph,

That's an excellent question. Do you think it would help if the zero-day
kernel testing infrastructure would check whether kernel patches introduce
new sparse complaints and if this is the case post these as a reply to the
e-mail with the patch that introduced the new sparse warnings?

Bart.