Re: [Outreachy kernel] [RESEND PATCH 2/2] staging: vboxvideo: Use unsigned int instead bool

[Julia Lawall]

[Adding Joe Perches]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2018, Sasha Levin wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 04:04:45PM -0300, Shayenne da Luz Moura wrote:
> > This change was suggested by checkpath.pl. Use unsigned int with bitfield
> > allocate only one bit to the boolean variable.
> >
> > CHECK: Avoid using bool structure members because of possible alignment
> > issues
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Shayenne da Luz Moura <shayenneluzmoura@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > drivers/staging/vboxvideo/vbox_drv.h        | 14 +++++++-------
> > drivers/staging/vboxvideo/vboxvideo_guest.h |  2 +-
> > 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/drivers/staging/vboxvideo/vbox_drv.h
> > b/drivers/staging/vboxvideo/vbox_drv.h
> > index 594f84272957..7d3e329a6b1c 100644
> > --- a/drivers/staging/vboxvideo/vbox_drv.h
> > +++ b/drivers/staging/vboxvideo/vbox_drv.h
> > @@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ struct vbox_private {
> > 	u8 __iomem *vbva_buffers;
> > 	struct gen_pool *guest_pool;
> > 	struct vbva_buf_ctx *vbva_info;
> > -	bool any_pitch;
> > +	unsigned int any_pitch:1;
> > 	u32 num_crtcs;
> > 	/** Amount of available VRAM, including space used for buffers. */
> > 	u32 full_vram_size;
>
> Using bitfields for booleans in these cases is less efficient than just
> using "regular" booleans for two reasons:
>
> 1. It will use the same amount of space. Due to alignment requirements,
> the compiler can't squeeze in anything into the 7 bits that are now
> "free". Each member, unless it's another bitfield, must start at a whole
> byte.
>
> 2. This is actually less efficient (slower) for the compiler to work
> with. The smallest granularity we have to access memory is 1 byte; we
> can't set individual bits directly in memory. For the original code, the
> assembly for 'vbox_private.any_pitch = true' would look something like
> this:
>
> 	movl   $0x1,-0x10(%rsp)
>
> As you can see, the compiler can directly write into the variable.
> However, when we switch to using bitfields, the compiler must preserve
> the original value of the other 7 bits, so it must first read them from
> memory, manipulate the value and write it back. The assembly would
> look something like this:
>
> 	movzbl -0x10(%rsp),%eax
> 	or     $0x1,%eax
> 	mov    %al,-0x10(%rsp)
>
> Which is less efficient than what was previously happening.

Maybe checkpatch could be more precise about what kind of bools should be
changed?

julia