[PATCH] dmaengine: tegra-apb: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array

From: Gustavo A. R. Silva
Date: Thu May 07 2020 - 15:20:48 EST


The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
introduced in C99:

struct foo {
int stuff;
struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by
this change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator
may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of
zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

sizeof(flexible-array-member) triggers a warning because flexible array
members have incomplete type[1]. There are some instances of code in
which the sizeof operator is being incorrectly/erroneously applied to
zero-length arrays and the result is zero. Such instances may be hiding
some bugs. So, this work (flexible-array member conversions) will also
help to get completely rid of those sorts of issues.

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/dma/tegra20-apb-dma.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/dma/tegra20-apb-dma.c b/drivers/dma/tegra20-apb-dma.c
index f6a2f42ffc51..a42c0b4d14ac 100644
--- a/drivers/dma/tegra20-apb-dma.c
+++ b/drivers/dma/tegra20-apb-dma.c
@@ -225,7 +225,7 @@ struct tegra_dma {
u32 global_pause_count;

/* Last member of the structure */
- struct tegra_dma_channel channels[0];
+ struct tegra_dma_channel channels[];
};

static inline void tdma_write(struct tegra_dma *tdma, u32 reg, u32 val)