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

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Date:   Mon, 16 Oct 2017 11:33:12 +0200
From:   Javier González <jg@...htnvm.io>
To:     Bart Van Assche <bart.vanassche@....com>
Cc:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        "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 6 Oct 2017, at 19.43, Bart Van Assche <bart.vanassche@....com> wrote:
> 
> 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?
> 

+1 to this.

Javier


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