Re: [PATCH 00/13] rust: bindings: Auto-generate inline static functions

From: Dirk Behme
Date: Thu Nov 07 2024 - 02:02:05 EST


On 07.11.2024 03:08, Alistair Francis wrote:
The kernel includes a large number of static inline functions that are
defined in header files. One example is the crypto_shash_descsize()
function which is defined in hash.h as

```
static inline unsigned int crypto_shash_descsize(struct crypto_shash *tfm)
{
return tfm->descsize;
}
```

bindgen is currently unable to generate bindings to these functions as
they are not publically exposed (they are static after all).

The Rust code currently uses rust_helper_* functions, such as
rust_helper_alloc_pages() for example to call the static inline
functions. But this is a hassle as someone needs to write a C helper
function.

Instead we can use the bindgen wrap-static-fns feature. The feature
is marked as experimental, but has recently been promoted to
non-experimental (dependig on your version of bindgen).

By supporting wrap-static-fns we automatically generate a C file called
extern.c that exposes the static inline functions, for example like this

```
unsigned int crypto_shash_descsize__extern(struct crypto_shash *tfm) { return crypto_shash_descsize(tfm); }
```

The nice part is that this is auto-generated.

We then also get a bindings_generate_static.rs file with the Rust
binding, like this

```
extern "C" {
#[link_name = "crypto_shash_descsize__extern"]
pub fn crypto_shash_descsize(tfm: *mut crypto_shash) -> core::ffi::c_uint;
}
```

So now we can use the static inline functions just like normal
functions.

There are a bunch of static inline functions that don't work though, because
the C compiler fails to build extern.c:
* functions with inline asm generate "operand probably does not match constraints"
errors (rip_rel_ptr() for example)
* functions with bit masks (u32_encode_bits() and friends) result in
"call to ‘__bad_mask’ declared with attribute error: bad bitfield mask"
errors

As well as that any static inline function that calls a function that has been
kconfig-ed out will fail to link as the function being called isn't built
(mdio45_ethtool_gset_npage for example)

Due to these failures we use a allow-list system (where functions must
be manually enabled).

This series adds support for bindgen generating wrappers for inline statics and
then converts the existing helper functions to this new method. This doesn't
work for C macros, so we can't reamove all of the helper functions, but we
can remove most.

Maybe this should be re-done against rust-next which at least contains

https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux/commit/d4d7c05f9656fd8e14c6977a54986264eb296ec8

which seems to conflict with the removal of some helpers file in this series.

Thanks!

Dirk