Re: [PATCH net-next v13 4/4] net: dsa: add basic initial driver for MxL862xx switches

From: Jakub Kicinski

Date: Thu Feb 05 2026 - 21:21:29 EST


On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 13:33:19 +0000 Daniel Golle wrote:
> +/* The switch firmware expects all structs to be byte-aligned */
> +#pragma pack(push, 1)

"Byte-aligned" means..? Generally aligned means that it starts
at an address which is multiple of X. All addresses are multiple of 1

We used you push back against blanket __packed because it's forcing
all *host* accesses to also assume that the structures are unaligned.
The best practice is to pack only specific structs which need it
and add compile_assert()s to make sure that the compiler doesn't add
any padding.

There's a couple of AI nitpicks, since I'm already complaining I'll
send these out too..