linux-kernel - [PATCH v2] kbuild: Enable GCC diagnostic context for value-tracking warnings

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Message-Id: <20251121184342.it.626-kees@kernel.org>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2025 10:43:48 -0800
From: Kees Cook <kees@...nel.org>
To: "Gustavo A . R . Silva" <gustavoars@...nel.org>
Cc: Kees Cook <kees@...nel.org>,
	Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>,
	Nicolas Schier <nicolas.schier@...ux.dev>,
	Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@...nel.org>,
	Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@...nel.org>,
	linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org,
	Thomas Weißschuh <thomas.weissschuh@...utronix.de>,
	Tamir Duberstein <tamird@...il.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-hardening@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH v2] kbuild: Enable GCC diagnostic context for value-tracking warnings

Enable GCC 16's coming "-fdiagnostics-show-context=N" option[1] to
provide enhanced diagnostic information for value-tracking warnings,
which displays the control flow chain leading to the diagnostic. This
covers our existing use of -Wrestrict and -Wstringop-overread, and
gets us closer to enabling -Warray-bounds, -Wstringop-overflow, and
-Wstringop-truncation, so we can track the rationale for the warning,
letting us more quickly identify actual issues vs what have looked in
the past like false positives. Fixes based on this work have already
been landing, e.g.:

  4a6f18f28627 ("net/mlx4_core: Avoid impossible mlx4_db_alloc() order value")
  8a39f1c870e9 ("ovl: Check for NULL d_inode() in ovl_dentry_upper()")
  e5f7e4e0a445 ("drm/amdgpu/atom: Work around vbios NULL offset false positive")

The context depth ("=N") provides the immediate decision path that led
to the problematic code location, showing conditional checks and branch
decisions that caused the warning. This will help us understand why
GCC's value-tracking analysis triggered the warning and makes it easier
to determine whether warnings are legitimate issues or false positives.

For example, an array bounds warning will now show the conditional
statements (like "if (i >= 4)") that established the out-of-bounds access
range, directly connecting the control flow to the warning location.
This is particularly valuable when GCC's interprocedural analysis can
generate warnings that are difficult to understand without seeing the
inferred control flow.

While my testing has shown that "=1" reports enough for finding
the origin of most bounds issues, I have used "=2" here just to be
conservative. Build time measurements with this option off, =1, and =2
are all with noise of each other, so there seems to be no harm in "turning
it up". If we need to, we can make this value configurable in the future.

Link: https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commit;h=6faa3cfe60ff9769d1bebfffdd2c7325217d7389 [1]
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <kees@...nel.org>
---
Cc: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@...nel.org>
Cc: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>
Cc: Nicolas Schier <nicolas.schier@...ux.dev>
Cc: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@...nel.org>
Cc: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@...nel.org>
Cc: <linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org>
---
 Makefile | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index d14824792227..d97452441cd0 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -940,6 +940,9 @@ KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option,-fzero-init-padding-bits=all)
 # for the randomize_kstack_offset feature. Disable it for all compilers.
 KBUILD_CFLAGS	+= $(call cc-option, -fno-stack-clash-protection)
 
+# Get details on warnings generated due to GCC value tracking.
+KBUILD_CFLAGS	+= $(call cc-option, -fdiagnostics-show-context=2)
+
 # Clear used registers at func exit (to reduce data lifetime and ROP gadgets).
 ifdef CONFIG_ZERO_CALL_USED_REGS
 KBUILD_CFLAGS	+= -fzero-call-used-regs=used-gpr
-- 
2.34.1