Re: [PATCH 1/5] bpf: Clear callee saved regs after updating REG0

[David Vernet]

On Mon, Aug 08, 2022 at 04:32:39PM -0700, Joanne Koong wrote:

[...]

> > It being a read-only const is was why I made this a BUILD_BUG_ON. My
> > intention here was to ensure that we're not accidentally skipping the
> > resetting of caller_saved[0]. The original code iterated from
> > caller_saved[0] -> caller_saved[CALLER_SAVED_REGS - 1]. Now that we're
> > starting from caller_saved[1], this compile-time assertion verifies that
> > we're not accidentally skipping caller_saved[0] by checking that it's the
> > same as BPF_REG_0, which is reset above. Does that make sense?
> 
> I think it's an invariant that r0 - r5 are the caller saved args and
> that caller_saved[0] will always be BPF_REG_0. I'm having a hard time
> seeing a case where this would change in the future, but then again, I
> am also not a fortune teller so maybe I am wrong here :) I don't think
> it's a big deal though so I don't feel strongly about this

I agree that it seems very unlikely to change, but I don't see the harm in
leaving it in. Compile time checks are very fast, and are meant for cases
such as these to check constant, build-time invariants. If you feel
strongly, I can remove it.

Thanks,
David