[PATCH] docs: deprecated.rst: Clean up fall-through details

From: Kees Cook
Date: Wed Mar 04 2020 - 14:03:36 EST


Add example of fall-through, list-ify the case ending statements, and
adjust the markup for links and readability. While here, adjust
strscpy() details to mention strscpy_pad().

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/process/deprecated.rst | 48 +++++++++++++++++-----------
1 file changed, 29 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/process/deprecated.rst b/Documentation/process/deprecated.rst
index 179f2a5625a0..f9f196d3a69b 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/deprecated.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/deprecated.rst
@@ -94,8 +94,8 @@ and other misbehavior due to the missing termination. It also NUL-pads the
destination buffer if the source contents are shorter than the destination
buffer size, which may be a needless performance penalty for callers using
only NUL-terminated strings. The safe replacement is :c:func:`strscpy`.
-(Users of :c:func:`strscpy` still needing NUL-padding will need an
-explicit :c:func:`memset` added.)
+(Users of :c:func:`strscpy` still needing NUL-padding should instead
+use strscpy_pad().)

If a caller is using non-NUL-terminated strings, :c:func:`strncpy()` can
still be used, but destinations should be marked with the `__nonstring
@@ -122,27 +122,37 @@ memory adjacent to the stack (when built without `CONFIG_VMAP_STACK=y`)

Implicit switch case fall-through
---------------------------------
-The C language allows switch cases to "fall-through" when a "break" statement
-is missing at the end of a case. This, however, introduces ambiguity in the
-code, as it's not always clear if the missing break is intentional or a bug.
+The C language allows switch cases to fall through to the next case
+when a "break" statement is missing at the end of a case. This, however,
+introduces ambiguity in the code, as it's not always clear if the missing
+break is intentional or a bug. For example, it's not obvious just from
+looking at the code if `STATE_ONE` is intentionally designed to fall
+through into `STATE_TWO`::
+
+ switch (value) {
+ case STATE_ONE:
+ do_something();
+ case STATE_TWO:
+ do_other();
+ break;
+ default:
+ WARN("unknown state");
+ }

As there have been a long list of flaws `due to missing "break" statements
<https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/484.html>`_, we no longer allow
-"implicit fall-through".
-
-In order to identify intentional fall-through cases, we have adopted a
-pseudo-keyword macro 'fallthrough' which expands to gcc's extension
-__attribute__((__fallthrough__)). `Statement Attributes
-<https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Statement-Attributes.html>`_
-
-When the C17/C18 [[fallthrough]] syntax is more commonly supported by
+implicit fall-through. In order to identify intentional fall-through
+cases, we have adopted a pseudo-keyword macro "fallthrough" which
+expands to gcc's extension `__attribute__((__fallthrough__))
+<https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Statement-Attributes.html>`_.
+(When the C17/C18 `[[fallthrough]]` syntax is more commonly supported by
C compilers, static analyzers, and IDEs, we can switch to using that syntax
-for the macro pseudo-keyword.
+for the macro pseudo-keyword.)

All switch/case blocks must end in one of:

- break;
- fallthrough;
- continue;
- goto <label>;
- return [expression];
+* break;
+* fallthrough;
+* continue;
+* goto <label>;
+* return [expression];
--
2.20.1


--
Kees Cook