Re: [PATCH] mm: mempolicy: turn vma_set_policy() intovma_dup_policy()

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Thu Jul 11 2013 - 18:33:19 EST


On Thu, 11 Jul 2013 15:27:46 -0700 (PDT) David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Jul 2013, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 11 Jul 2013 15:13:03 -0700 (PDT) David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > > +int vma_dup_policy(struct vm_area_struct *src, struct vm_area_struct *dst)
> > > > +{
> > > > + struct mempolicy *pol = mpol_dup(vma_policy(src));
> > > > +
> > > > + if (IS_ERR(pol))
> > > > + return PTR_ERR(pol);
> > >
> > > PTR_ERR() returns long, so vma_dup_policy() needs to return long.
> >
> > hm, really? vma_dup_policy() returns an errno and errnos have type "int".
> >
> > Arguably it is PTR_ERR() which returns the wrong type...
> >
>
> PTR_ERR() may not imply IS_ERR(),

Well why not. Are we saying that code can legitimately convert the
PTR_ERR() return value back into a pointer? If so that sounds nuts.

> which I believe Rusty is trying to fix
> with his series that fixes up abuses of PTR_ERR().

Well I hope all of this will be completely documented in err.h.
Otherwise the abuses will simply continue.
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