Re: [PATCH 6/7] md/raid10, LLVM: get rid of variable length array

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:52:01AM -0700, Michael Davidson wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 5:44 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Be that as it may; what you construct above is disgusting. Surely the
> > code can be refactored to not look like dog vomit?
> >
> > Also; its not immediately obvious conf->copies is 'small' and this
> > doesn't blow up the stack; I feel that deserves a comment somewhere.
> >
> 
> I agree that the code is horrible.
> 
> It is, in fact, exactly the same solution that was used to remove
> variable length arrays in structs from several of the crypto drivers a
> few years ago - see the definition of SHASH_DESC_ON_STACK() in
> "crypto/hash.h" - I did not, however, hide the horrors in a macro
> preferring to leave the implementation visible as a warning to whoever
> might touch the code next.
> 
> I believe that the actual stack usage is exactly the same as it was previously.
> 
> I can certainly wrap this  up in a macro and add comments with
> appropriately dire warnings in it if you feel that is both necessary
> and sufficient.

We got away with ugly in the past, so we should get to do it again?