Re: [PATCH 11/14] staging: android: ion: Allow heap name to be null

[Laura Abbott]

On 1/16/19 9:12 AM, Andrew F. Davis wrote:
> On 1/16/19 9:28 AM, Brian Starkey wrote:
> > Hi Andrew,
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 12:05:20PM -0600, Andrew F. Davis wrote:
> > > The heap name can be used for debugging but otherwise does not seem
> > > to be required and no other part of the code will fail if left NULL
> > > except here. We can make it required and check for it at some point,
> > > for now lets just prevent this from causing a NULL pointer exception.
> >
> > I'm not so keen on this one. In the "new" API with heap querying, the
> > name string is the only way to identify the heap. I think Laura
> > mentioned at XDC2017 that it was expected that userspace should use
> > the strings to find the heap they want.
>
> Right now the names are only for debug. I accidentally left the name
> null once and got a kernel crash. This is the only spot where it is
> needed so I fixed it up. The other option is to make the name mandatory
> and properly error out, I don't want to do that right now until the
> below discussion is had to see if names really do matter or not.

Yes, the heap names are part of the query API and are the expected
way to identify individual heaps for the API at the moment so having
a null heap name is incorrect. The heap name seemed like the best way
to identify heaps to userspace but if you have an alternative proposal
I'd be interested.

Thanks,
Laura

>