netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next v13 4/4] net: dsa: add basic initial driver for MxL862xx switches

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Message-ID: <20260205182117.41618f8d@kernel.org>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2026 18:21:17 -0800
From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
To: Daniel Golle <daniel@...rotopia.org>
Cc: Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>, Vladimir Oltean <olteanv@...il.com>,
 "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, Eric Dumazet
 <edumazet@...gle.com>, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>, Rob Herring
 <robh@...nel.org>, Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk+dt@...nel.org>, Conor Dooley
 <conor+dt@...nel.org>, Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@...il.com>, Russell King
 <linux@...linux.org.uk>, Simon Horman <horms@...nel.org>,
 netdev@...r.kernel.org, devicetree@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Frank Wunderlich <frankwu@....de>, Chad
 Monroe <chad@...roe.io>, Cezary Wilmanski <cezary.wilmanski@...ran.com>,
 Liang Xu <lxu@...linear.com>, John Crispin <john@...ozen.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v13 4/4] net: dsa: add basic initial driver for
 MxL862xx switches

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 13:33:19 +0000 Daniel Golle wrote:
> +/* The switch firmware expects all structs to be byte-aligned */
> +#pragma pack(push, 1)

"Byte-aligned" means..? Generally aligned means that it starts
at an address which is multiple of X. All addresses are multiple of 1

We used you push back against blanket __packed because it's forcing
all *host* accesses to also assume that the structures are unaligned.
The best practice is to pack only specific structs which need it
and add compile_assert()s to make sure that the compiler doesn't add
any padding.

There's a couple of AI nitpicks, since I'm already complaining I'll
send these out too..