Re: [PATCH v3 1/2] nmi_backtrace: Allow excluding an arbitrary CPU

[Doug Anderson]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 8:02 AM Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > It would have been slightly safer to modify arch_trigger_cpumask_backtrace
> > > by switching arguments so that some leftovers are captured easier.
> >
> > I'm not sure I understand. Oh, you're saying make the prototype of
> > arch_trigger_cpumask_backtrace() incompatible so that if someone is
> > directly calling it then it'll be a compile-time error?
>
> exactly. bool to int promotion would be too easy to miss while the
> pointer to int would complain loudly.
>
> > I guess the
> > hope is that nobody is calling that directly and they're calling
> > through the trigger_...() functions.
>
> Hope is one thing, being preventive another.
>
> > For now I'm going to leave this alone.
>
> If you are going to send another version then please consider this. Not
> a hard requirement but better.

If I do send another version, do you have any suggestions for how to
change this to make it incompatible? I guess swapping the order of the
parameters would be best? I considered doing that for v4 but I felt
like long term the current order of the parameters was better. I also
considered a rename, but that different problems. ;-) If I rename both
the #define and the function then if someone has an out-of-tree patch
adding arch_trigger_cpumask_backtrace() for another architecture, like
say arm64, then there would be no compile-time failure indicating that
the out-of-tree patch needs updating. I could rename the functions but
_not_ the #define, I guess?