linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] stackleak: Remove unnecessary '0' values from ret

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Date:   Tue, 31 Oct 2023 21:03:20 -0700
From:   Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>
To:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Cc:     Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Li zeming <zeming@...china.com>, gor@...ux.ibm.com,
        hca@...ux.ibm.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] stackleak: Remove unnecessary '0' values from ret

On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 05:39:21PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 11:14:43AM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 02:08:24PM +0800, Li zeming wrote:
> > > ret is assigned first, so it does not need to initialize the assignment.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Li zeming <zeming@...china.com>
> > 
> > Does this actually need to change? It's not harmful, and deleting the
> > assignment doesn't save any lines of code.
> 
> I prefer explicit initialization. Any unused initialization will be
> optimized away by the compiler during Dead Store Elimination, so all
> removing the initialization does is make the code more fragile in the
> future.
> 

Also, be careful with those submissions, and do not take the claim
in the commit message at face value. Several of them introduce
uninitialize variable errors. I had two submissions for the watchdog
subsystem, and both of them were wrong.

Guenter