Re: [RFC] uapi: Convert stat.h #define flags to enums

[Andrii Nakryiko]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 9:39 AM Daniel Xu <dxu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi Christoph,
>
> On Sun Apr 19, 2020 at 6:30 PM PST, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > And that breaks every userspace program using ifdef to check if a
> > symbolic name has been defined.
>
> How about shadowing #define's? Like for `enum nfnetlink_groups` in
> include/uapi/linux/netfilter/nfnetlink.h .
>

FWIW, we did #define to enum conversion for big chunks of BPF UAPI
headers ([0]) and that greatly improved BPF user experience. A bunch
of other kernel headers are already using enums for constants. I think
converting more Linux headers to use enums for constants and capture
them as part of type information is a good step forward that should
further simplify writing all kinds of introspection and monitoring
tools.

  [0] https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/netdev/patch/20200303003233.3496043-2-andriin@xxxxxx/

> Thanks,
> Daniel