netdev - Re: [PATCH RFC] Introduce uniptr_t as a generic "universal" pointer

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Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2023 08:48:11 -0700
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Cc: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, 
	Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@...ux.intel.com>, Mark Brown <broonie@...nel.org>, 
	netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] Introduce uniptr_t as a generic "universal" pointer

On Wed, 9 Aug 2023 at 07:38, Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de> wrote:
>
> The original set_fs removal series did that as uptr_t, and Linus
> hated it with passion.  I somehow doubt he's going to like it more now.

Christoph is right. I do hate this. The whole "pass a pointer that is
either user or kernel" concept is wrong.

Now, if it was some kind of extended pointer that also included the
length of the area and had a way to deal with updating the pointer
sanely, maybe that would be a different thing.

And it should guarantee that in the case of a user pointer it had gone
through access_ok().

And it also allowed the other common cases like having a raw page
array, along with a unified interface to copy and update this kind of
pointer either as a source or a destination, that would be a different
thing.

But this kind of "if (uniptr_is_kernel(src))" special case thing is
just garbage and *not* acceptable.

And oh, btw, we already *have* that extended kind of unipointer thing.

It's called "struct iov_iter".

And yes, it's a very complicated thing, exactly because it handles way
more cases than that uniptr_t. It's a *real* unified pointer of many
different types.

Those iov_iter things are often so complicated that you really don't
want to use them, but if you really want a uniptr, that is what you
should do. It comes with a real cost, but it does come with real
advantages, one of which is "this is extensively tested
nfrastructure".

                  Linus