Re: [PATCH] mips: avoid explicit UB in assignment of mips_io_port_base

From: Paul Burton
Date: Sat Aug 24 2019 - 10:12:56 EST


Hello,

Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> The code in question is modifying a variable declared const through
> pointer manipulation. Such code is explicitly undefined behavior, and
> is the lone issue preventing malta_defconfig from booting when built
> with Clang:
>
> If an attempt is made to modify an object defined with a const-qualified
> type through use of an lvalue with non-const-qualified type, the
> behavior is undefined.
>
> LLVM is removing such assignments. A simple fix is to not declare
> variables const that you plan on modifying. Limiting the scope would be
> a better method of preventing unwanted writes to such a variable.
>
> Further, the code in question mentions "compiler bugs" without any links
> to bug reports, so it is difficult to know if the issue is resolved in
> GCC. The patch was authored in 2006, which would have been GCC 4.0.3 or
> 4.1.1. The minimal supported version of GCC in the Linux kernel is
> currently 4.6.
>
> For what its worth, there was UB before the commit in question, it just
> added a barrier and got lucky IRT codegen. I don't think there's any
> actual compiler bugs related, just runtime bugs due to UB.
>
> Fixes: 966f4406d903 ("[MIPS] Work around bad code generation for <asm/io.h>.")

Applied to mips-next.

> commit 12051b318bc3
> https://git.kernel.org/mips/c/12051b318bc3
>
> Link: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/610
> Fixes: 966f4406d903 ("[MIPS] Work around bad code generation for <asm/io.h>.")
> Reported-by: Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@xxxxxxxxx>
> Debugged-by: Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@xxxxxxxxx>
> Suggested-by: Eli Friedman <efriedma@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Reviewed-by: Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@xxxxxxxxx>
> Tested-by: Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Paul Burton <paul.burton@xxxxxxxx>

Thanks,
Paul

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