Re: [PATCH rdma-next 2/4] gcov: Use proper duplication routine for const pointer

[Rasmus Villemoes]

On 02/09/2020 10.55, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> From: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> The filename is a const pointer, so use the proper string duplication
> routine that takes into account const identifier.

This commit log makes no sense at all.

kstrdup_const is merely an optimization that can be used when there's a
good chance that the passed string lives in vmlinux' .rodata, in which
case it is known to be immortal, and we can avoid allocating heap memory
to contain a duplicate. [It also requires that the caller has no
intention of modifying the returned string.]

In the case of something called ->filename, I assume it's initialized
with __FILE__ somewhere, making the above true for built-in stuff but
not for modules. So if the gcov_info can live longer than the module,
it's of course necessary to duplicate the string, but OTOH making an
optimization for the built-in stuff makes sense. So this is certainly
one of the places where kstrdup_const() seems applicable. But it has
nothing whatsoever to do with the C-level qualifiers the argument may have.

Rasmus