Re: [PATCH, RESEND 1/2] dvb-frontends: fix i2c access helpers for KASAN

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em Thu, 30 Nov 2017 15:06:15 +0100
Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> escreveu:

> On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 1:49 PM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab
> <mchehab@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Link: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=81715
> >> Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
> >> ---
> >> I'm undecided here whether there should be a comment pointing
> >> to PR81715 for each file that the bogus local variable workaround
> >> to prevent it from being cleaned up again. It's probably not
> >> necessary since anything that causes actual problems would also
> >> trigger a build warning.  
> 
> >
> > This kind of sucks, and it is completely unexpected... why val is
> > so special that it would require this kind of hack?  
> 
> It's explained in the gcc bug report: basically gcc always skipped
> one optimization on inline function arguments that it does on
> normal variables. Without KASAN and asan-stack, we didn't
> notice because the impact was fairly small, but I ended up finally
> getting to the bottom of it in September, and it finally got fixed.
> 
> I had an older version of the patch that was much more invasive
> before we understood what exactly is happening, see
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/3/2/484

Yeah, I saw the old versions and I'm following this thread.

> > Also, there's always a risk of someone see it and decide to
> > simplify the code, returning it to the previous state.
> >
> > So, if we're willing to do something like that, IMHO, we should have
> > some macro that would document it, and fall back to the direct
> > code if the compiler is not gcc 5, 6 or 7.  
> 
> Older compilers are also affected and will produce better code
> with my change, the difference is just smaller without asan-stack
> (added ion gcc-5) is disabled, since that increases the stack
> space used by each variable to (IIRC) 32 bytes.
> 
> The fixed gcc-8 produces identical code with and without my
> change.
> 
> I don't think that a macro would help here at all, but if you
> prefer, I could add a link to that gcc bug in each function that
> has the problem.

My main concern here is to avoid someone to undo the changes.
Adding a quick note on each of those changes is helpful, in
order to warn people and refrain undoing.

So, adding a quick comment works for me.

Regards,
Mauro