linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] bootconfig: Use hexadecimal ASCII string for size and checksum

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Date:   Thu, 19 Nov 2020 09:36:47 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>
Cc:     Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
        Chen Yu <yu.c.chen@...el.com>,
        Chen Yu <yu.chen.surf@...il.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        "open list:DOCUMENTATION" <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] bootconfig: Use hexadecimal ASCII string for size
 and checksum

On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 6:31 AM Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org> wrote:
>
> Here is a seires of patches to change the bootconfig footer format
> to use 8-bytes hexadecimal ASCII string for size and checksum instead
> of u32.

Ugh.,

Just make it little-endian only.

The _worst_ thing to do is to make it some kind of "native-endian",
because then you have to deal with cross building issues etc.

But using a __le32 type and just doing "le32_to_cpu()" is trivial and
optimal - not just because everybody relevant is LE anyway, but simply
because even if you _aren't_ LE, an unconditional byte swap is better
than a conditional native access.

           Linus