Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] linux/bits.h: Add compile time sanity check of GENMASK inputs

[Guenter Roeck]

On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 01:03:58AM +0200, Rikard Falkeborn wrote:
> GENMASK() and GENMASK_ULL() are supposed to be called with the high bit
> as the first argument and the low bit as the second argument. Mixing
> them will return a mask with zero bits set.
> 
> Recent commits show getting this wrong is not uncommon, see e.g.
> commit aa4c0c9091b0 ("net: stmmac: Fix misuses of GENMASK macro") and
> commit 9bdd7bb3a844 ("clocksource/drivers/npcm: Fix misuse of GENMASK
> macro").
> 
> To prevent such mistakes from appearing again, add compile time sanity
> checking to the arguments of GENMASK() and GENMASK_ULL(). If both the
> arguments are known at compile time, and the low bit is higher than the
> high bit, break the build to detect the mistake immediately.
> 
> Since GENMASK() is used in declarations, BUILD_BUG_ON_ZERO() must be
> used instead of BUILD_BUG_ON(), and __is_constexpr() must be used instead
> of __builtin_constant_p().
> 
> If successful, BUILD_BUG_OR_ZERO() returns 0 of type size_t. To avoid
> problems with implicit conversions, cast the result of BUILD_BUG_OR_ZERO
> to unsigned long.
> 
> Since both BUILD_BUG_ON_ZERO() and __is_constexpr() only uses sizeof()
> on the arguments passed to them, neither of them evaluate the expression
> unless it is a VLA. Therefore, GENMASK(1, x++) still behaves as
> expected.
> 
> Commit 95b980d62d52 ("linux/bits.h: make BIT(), GENMASK(), and friends
> available in assembly") made the macros in linux/bits.h available in
> assembly. Since neither BUILD_BUG_OR_ZERO() or __is_constexpr() are asm
> compatible, disable the checks if the file is included in an asm file.
> 

Who is going to fix the fallout ? For example, arm64:defconfig no longer
compiles with this patch applied.

It seems to me that the benefit of catching misuses of GENMASK is much
less than the fallout from no longer compiling kernels, since those
kernels won't get any test coverage at all anymore.

Guenter