Re: [PATCH 5/5] kernel: tracepoints: add support for relative references

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 18 August 2017 at 09:26, Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> * Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> -static void for_each_tracepoint_range(struct tracepoint * const *begin,
>> -             struct tracepoint * const *end,
>> +static void for_each_tracepoint_range(const void *begin, const void *end,
>>               void (*fct)(struct tracepoint *tp, void *priv),
>>               void *priv)
>>  {
>> +#ifdef CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_PREL32_RELOCATIONS
>> +     const signed int *iter;
>> +
>> +     if (!begin)
>> +             return;
>> +     for (iter = begin; iter < (signed int *)end; iter++) {
>> +             fct((struct tracepoint *)((unsigned long)iter + *iter), priv);
>> +     }
>
> I think checkpatch is correct here to complain about the unnecessary curly braces
> here.
>

Fair enough. I will clean up to the extent feasible.

> Plus why the heavy use of 'signed int' here and elsewhere in the patches - why
> not 'int' ?
>

Yes, just 'int' should be sufficient. Force of habit, I suppose, given
that unqualified 'char' is ambiguous between architectures, but this
does not apply to 'int' of course.

> Plus #2, the heavy use of type casts looks pretty ugly to begin with - is there no
> way to turn this into more natural code?
>

Actually, Steven requested to keep the tracepoint section markers as
they are, and cast them to (int *) in the conditionally compiled
PREL32 case. So I guess it is a matter of taste, but because the types
are fundamentally incompatible when this code is in effect (and the
size of the pointed-to type differs on 64-bit architectures), there is
always some mangling required.

The initcall patch is probably the cleanest in this regard, but
involves typedefs, which are frowned upon as well.