linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] KEYS: encrypted: Use designated initializers for match_table

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Message-ID: <e60f6a07d00c1fd87b4509947e8738ecab9560b4.camel@HansenPartnership.com>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2025 09:51:58 -0400
From: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To: Thorsten Blum <thorsten.blum@...ux.dev>
Cc: Mimi Zohar <zohar@...ux.ibm.com>, David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>, 
 Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@...nel.org>, Paul Moore <paul@...l-moore.com>,
 James Morris <jmorris@...ei.org>, "Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>,
 linux-integrity@...r.kernel.org, keyrings@...r.kernel.org, 
 linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] KEYS: encrypted: Use designated initializers for
 match_table_t structs

On Thu, 2025-10-09 at 15:30 +0200, Thorsten Blum wrote:
> On 9. Oct 2025, at 14:44, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Thu, 2025-10-09 at 13:58 +0200, Thorsten Blum wrote:
> > > Use designated initializers for 'key_format_tokens' and
> > > 'key_tokens' to allow struct fields to be reordered more easily
> > 
> > How does it improve that?  The key,value pairs are surrounded by
> > braces so we just cut and paste the lot anyway.
> 
> Using designated initializers (especially for global structs) allows
> the fields of struct match_token from linux/parser.h to be reordered
> or extended more easily, improving overall maintainability.

Why would we ever want to reorder them?  The reason the ordering is
{token, parser} string is because that's the nicest order to read them
in.

> 
> > > and to improve readability.
> > 
> > I don't think I agree with this when looking through the code,
> > especially because this is the way it's done for *every* option in
> > the entire key subsystem.  So firstly I really don't think it's
> > helpful for only encrypted keys to be different from everything
> > else and secondly when I read the code (as I often do to figure out
> > what the options mean), the additional .token and .pattern just get
> > in the way of what I'm looking for.
> 
> I just stumbled upon this and didn't check any other files.

jejb@...grow:~/git/linux> git grep 'match_table_t'|wc -l
49

I'll leave it as an exercise to you to figure out how many use the
style you're proposing.

There's definite advantage in uniformity and even if I accepted the
readability argument, which I don't, it's too small a reason to churn
nearly 50 files one at a time.

Regards,

James